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From: bobmon@iuvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 64 Vs 32
Message-ID: <3436@iuvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Mar-87 09:45:58 EST
Article-I.D.: iuvax.3436
Posted: Sat Mar 21 09:45:58 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Mar-87 21:37:34 EST
References: <3810013@nucsrl.UUCP> <28200016@ccvaxa> <1308@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Reply-To: bobmon@iuvax.UUCP (Che' Flamingo)
Organization: Camo Flamingo Liberation Affront
Lines: 41
Summary: a half-baked opinion: size correlates with speed

davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes:
>
>Eight bit machines could do office automation quite well, and
>many were used with Concurrent CP/M as multiuser machines. The
>16 bit machines are being used to run small businesses, schools,
>etc. The 68020 and 80386 have enough power to run large
>businesses, schools, city and county government, etc.
>
>The reason that machines like PCs sold so well is that many
>people really needed them, and the large market brought
>competition and ecomonics of scale. The market for 32 bit
>computers goes all the way to running most countries. Who then
>needs 64 bits?
>	[...]
>I predict that the micro and mini computer markets will be
>largely 32 bit for 5-8 years.  [...]

I replaced an 8-bit 6502 machine with an 8088 (V20 now), and wish I had
something "one size larger."  Not because of the address space, 640K is
adequate for what I'm doing at the moment.  The issue for me personally is
one of speed.  If/when I move on to more memory, the ad hoc methods used to
access it on my current machine will make that access quite slow; as it is, I
start some runs, go to bed, and look for results in the morning.

In the microcomputer arena the increased word sizes have been accompanied by
increased clock rates, and I think that most people who want larger machines
want the speed at least as much as the memory; given virtual memory, speed is
the entire issue.  (No, not always, I agree.)

So I agree that for word size per se, 32 bits is surely adequate; 16 bits is
probably sufficient for most things that people do (floating point and address
space are the two exceptions I can think of).  BUT if somebody comes out with
a 64-bit CPU that also moves at 50MHz (or whatever), I think there will be a
large market for that CPU in applications that are insensitive to the word size
but are quite sensitive to the speed.

I don't see that 64 bits does imply a faster machine when working on characters,
"normal-size" integers, etc., and to that extent I agree that 32-bit machines
will probably dominate until people stop making them faster.  As Bill points
out, IBM has been making them faster for a long time and will probably continue
to do so.