🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <WAYNE.90Feb11165528@dsndata.uucp>, 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