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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!think!ames!amdahl!meccts!zeke!kevin
From: kevin@zeke.UUCP (Kevin Buchs)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 64 Vs 32
Message-ID: <181@zeke.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Mar-87 06:50:48 EST
Article-I.D.: zeke.181
Posted: Tue Mar 17 06:50:48 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Mar-87 07:17:19 EST
References: <3810013@nucsrl.UUCP> <985@rpics.RPI.EDU> <1310@ucbcad.berkeley.edu> <784@ames.UUCP>
Reply-To: kevin@zeke.UUCP (Kevin Buchs)
Organization: Zycad Corporation, St. Paul, Mn
Lines: 23
Keywords: address space size

In article <784@ames.UUCP> lamaster@pioneer.UUCP (Hugh LaMaster) writes:
>In article <1310@ucbcad.berkeley.edu> faustus@ucbcad.berkeley.edu (Wayne A. Christopher) writes:
>>What we need to ask is, who will need more than ~1G of memory?  I think
>>the only applications that currently could use this much memory are
>>scientific programs that run on Crays (which I think are addressible to
>>the 64-bit word anyway).  I certainly haven't been running into the 1G
>>limit too often lately.
>>
>There could be other applications besides the often mentioned scientific
>and graphics programs which could potentially benefit from machines with
>larger address spaces.  Consider database applications, for example.

Perhaps we should break free from thinking about virtual memory in the
first place.  What about programs and files "permanently" resident in
memory.  I believe that once one starts thinking this way, the uses of 
large memories are abundant - disk access is slower than memory.  Also
the lack of the hardware and operating system overhead to support 
virtual memory could speed up processing.


-- 
Kevin Buchs   3500 Zycad Dr. Oakdale, MN 55109  (612)779-5548
Zycad Corp.   {rutgers,ihnp4,amdahl,umn-cs}!meccts!zeke!kevin