🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <44sl81$hr1@murrow.corp.sgi.com>, mash@mash.engr.sgi.com (John R. Mashey) writes:
>In article <44p44b$aqe@news.dtc.hp.com>, shoens@hpl.hp.com (Kurt Shoens) writes:
>|> Organization: Hewlett-Packard
>|> 
>|> Or another way to look at is economically.  Suppose in the future memory
>|> system prices drop to 1 cent per megabyte.  Then 64 bits worth of physical
>|> memory costs $160 billion.  Carrying it further, at .01 cents/megabyte it's
>|> still $1.6 billion.
>|> 
>|> Forget your children's college tuition costs.  Start saving now for the
>|> memories of the future!
>
>True ... but easily confusing.  I doubt that anybody intends to build
>2**64 byte memories any time soon, hence the cost of such things is meaningless.
>

I don't know whether anyone has done this sum and I have missed it. If you
assume indexing through memory at 1 nsec intervals, 32 bits of address space
takes just over 4 seconds. 64 bits of space takes over 500 years!

I have a feeling that for most of us, it could be a bit of a waste of money!

I know OS people do like a bit of flexibiltiy, but I have a feeling that 64
bits is going to be enough for quite a long time.

Ian.

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