Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdurb!aglew
From: aglew@mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: looking for >32-bit address space
Message-ID: <28200299@mcdurb>
Date: 12 Apr 89 15:34:00 GMT
References: <1032@myrias.UUCP>
Lines: 19
Nf-ID: #R:myrias.UUCP:1032:mcdurb:28200299:000:718
Nf-From: mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM!aglew    Apr 12 10:34:00 1989


In a recent CACM article on volume rendering a good, real
example of the type of application that will need >32 bits
of address is presented:

	The smallest data set being massaged was 10x10x30,
	and the largest was 10,000x10,000x4,000 voxels.

True, these'll be sparse, but even sparsely such a picture will
occupy a lot of space. Especially when you add properties to
each voxel.

A while back a computer company I used to work for was talking
about architecting a machine for a flat 64 bit address space,
implementing only 40 at first. That was a good few years ago.
I'd guess that you'd have to start at 48 now, if you wanted that
to be a sales distinction.

(PS. that particular project never got off the ground)