Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!oracle!news From: csimmons@jewel.oracle.com (Charles Simmons) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: 64-bit addresses Message-ID: <1990Feb12.133414.1661@oracle.com> Date: 12 Feb 90 13:34:14 GMT References: <9708@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <20270@cfctech.cfc.com> <11112@encore.Encore.COM> <753@dgis.dtic.dla.mil> Sender: news@oracle.com Reply-To: csimmons@oracle.com Organization: Oracle Corp Lines: 37 In article , wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) writes: > of course before you can argue about when 64 bit computers are common, > you must first define what a "64 bit computer" is, and what it means > to be "common". to me, a computer system has become common when you > can buy a usable system for less than $10k. i believe the different > parts of the computer will become "64 bit" at different times. the > following is a list of the parts that i can think of and blatant > guesses about when i expect them to become 64 bit. While not common, 64-bit computers aren't completely uncommon. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong about the Cray being a 64-bit computer. Also, there's the NCube 2. This little beastie implements an ALU, FPU, memory controller, and 28 bit-serial DMA channels in about 250,000 transistors. There are 16 64-bit registers that can hold either floating point values or integer values. You could probably buy these for around $10,000 per node if you were willing to settle for 4 Megabytes of memory per node. [You can glue up to 8192 of these nodes into a hypercube.] > integer registers (ALU) 20-30 years > floating point regs 64 bit now, 128 bit in the next 3-10 years. > you will never see more than 128 bits. There is something to be said for having truly general purpose 64-bit registers that can hold either floating point values or integer values. Now that FPUs and ALUs are being implemented on the same chip, maybe it would make sense to implement a single register set instead of two separate register sets. It would probably simplify certain aspects of register allocation in compilers. Of course, the 88K seems to have kept two separate register sets... > -wayne -- Chuck