🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <44gsu7$re4@sernews.raleigh.ibm.com>, mayhew@vnet.ibm.com writes:

|> In <44d1n3$6tn@murrow.corp.sgi.com>, mash@mash.engr.sgi.com (John R. Mashey) writes:

|> >1) For many years DRAM gets 4X larger every 3 years, or 2 bits/3 years.
|> 
|> This is of course dangerous territory because, to date, everyone that has 
|> predicted some slowing in the rate of growth has had criticism heaped upon 
Yes, and sorry, I might have been a little clearer.  I've mostly used the same
analysis to deter people from thinking that we'd be fighting the 64->128-bit
conversion in the year 2000: I've seen people claiming that this year, and
I also got beat up in 1991 taht R4K's were only 64-bit, and why didn't we
go straight to 128-bit? :-)  Anyway, to be clear: this was a straightline
analysis, and indeed there are plenty of big IF's given the likely process
gyrations out a few years.



|> I think the 64-bit transition is one that brings little to no real value. It will 
|> increase code and data size with very little return in terms of performance.
It doesn't increase code size much, programs whose data is dominated by
floating-point arrays effectively don't increase in any noticable amount.

|> I have been measuring program size for the last 6 years on every system 
|> I encounter, looking for the largest executables. This includes a broad
|> range of systems from mainframes to PC's. What I have found is that the
|> largest executable on what seems to be a typical system does not have 
|> more than a dozen megabytes of executable code. I have seen no
|> appreciable change in this size over the last few years.
This is interesting ... but irrelevant, as code size is not pushing on the
edge, but data size.

...
|> there are some limited number of applications and users that have needs
|> that transcend the 32-bit addressing boundary, I just do not think this is the
|> general case. 
I don't think we disagree, in some sense, i.e., after all, on this planet,
the "general case" is that person has 0MB of disk space, because the "average
person" doesn't own a computer, and the "most common" case for memory is
probably 640K or 1MB for DOS-based PC's.   On the other hand, we
disagree on the timing of the 64-bit need, but I suspect this is mostly
from talking to different kinds of customers...

Anyway, I agree: the people you talk to may not need 64-bit.
The people I talk to have been complaining for years about 2GB file and
8GB filesystem limits... 


-john mashey    DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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