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From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Out of Virtual Memory?
Message-ID: <833@peora.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Apr-85 12:59:22 EST
Article-I.D.: peora.833
Posted: Tue Apr 16 12:59:22 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Apr-85 02:38:17 EST
References: <1515@decwrl.UUCP> <581@ahuta.UUCP> <202@phri.UUCP>
Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl.
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>          I remember reading once that the biggest address size you
>  would ever need would be 200 bits.  The reason for this is that there
>  are 2**200 atoms in the universe and it is absurd to want to enumerate
>  more things than that.  Any comments?

Certainly ... you are assuming that all computations involve things in the
concrete, physical, discrete world; and that such computations require some
enumeration of a subset of these objects; but this is clearly not the case.
For instance, suppose you want to generate the set of 2**200+1 prime
numbers, and keep them in a table so they'll be readily available.

It's not even possible, I don't think, to argue that you'd run out of storage
media, since your storage medium might be nonatomic; consider two pairs
of antennae, positioned arbitrarily far apart, with one antenna sending a
stream of bits to the remote antenna, which then reflects back the signal
via the other antenna of the pair.  Clearly this is a storage medium, and
does not use any atoms to actually store the data; and if positioned
arbitrarily far apart (assuming the signal would still be detectable at the
remote site) could store arbitrarily much data.
-- 
Full-Name:  J. Eric Roskos
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