Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 12:36:55 05/16/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 16, 2002 at 14:57:48, Roy Eassa wrote: >On May 16, 2002 at 14:05:53, J. C. Boco wrote: >>On May 15, 2002 at 05:09:59, Michael Vox wrote: >> >>>Has anyone heard or care to make a prediction when Intel will be able to mass >>>produce a 64 bit CPU? >>> >>>It would seem this is the next big step in home use CPUs. >>> >>>I have heard that by 2005 CPUs will be running at 30 ghz. What will be the cause >>>of such a dramatic jump from 2.2 ghz to 30 ghz in just three years or so? >> >> >>Can someone explain to me why a 64 bit is better than a 32 bit processor? > >More bits! > >If same MHz but more bits per operations, then more bits per second get operated >on. Besides more work per cycle, we have several other advantages. The most important is address space. A 32 bit address space cannot possibly see more than 4 gigabytes without resulting to tricks (like segment/offset and that sort of goo). A 64 bit chip can address a lot more. 32 bits = 4294967296 units of address space 64 bits = 18446744073709551616 units of address space 128 bits = 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 units of address space 4 gigabytes sounds like a lot, but I have had a single table in a database consume 28 gigabytes. For things like analyzing the human genonme and other really large scale projects, 32 bits of address space is totally inadequate.
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