[rescue] 128 bits...

[Scott Newell]

>Seriously, what would you do with 128 bits? That is a huge chunk of
>data to deal with natively - I think eventually you will find that the
>waste in doing normal work will preclude wide-spread adoption...

How 'bout another special case: networking processor designed for IPv6?
IPv6 addresses are 128bits, right?  Seems like there'd be some advantage in
being able to ram those through an ALU in one fell swoop.  Granted, you can
do this now if you want, and it wouldn't require widening the entire CPU to
128 bits.


>I suspect (but have no direct knowledge - Dave M. help me), I think 64
>bits are a waste for most end-user applications. OTOH, I am sure it is
>great for certain applications.

At current memory density/price rates, how long before it would be
affordable (say, $100k) to fully populate a 64 bit address space?  At
current memory packaging density improvement rates, how long before you
could reasonably fit a fully populated 64 bit address space close enough to
the cpu to run the connections?  My gut feel (and maybe I'm wrong here, not
having done any research on it) is that a wider arch starts to get a lot
more attractive as soon as you can reasonably fill the address space of the
previous, narrow, arch.


newell