[OT] End-user uses for x86-64 (was: Why are still not at 64 bits)

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Sat Feb 17 15:20:14 EST 2007


On 2/17/07, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
>> machine.  They don't understand why, but they know they can play
>> digital music while writing a term paper on their new Dell, while
>> their old Apple ][ or IBM-PC Model 5150 couldn't handle that.
>
>   That has nothing to do with sized bits I'm afraid.

  I'm inclined to disagree for the general case.  As long as it's a
general purpose computer (and not a bunch of small
application-specific computers), the limitations imposed by only being
able to deal with 64 KB of data at a time are pretty real.  It may in
theory be possible to do things in that small a space, by doing enough
task switching or memory windowing or breaking the data down into tiny
chunks or  multi-register arithmetic.  But it's so slow, cumbersome,
and error-prone as to be a significant obstacle.

  Sure, the i386 brought a number of other advantages to the table,
chief among them a real MMU, but the address word size mattered, too,
I think.

>   And until there's someone forcing their choices upon them, the
> general public will be utterly confused by the choices.

  The general public tends to be utterly confused, period.

> They don't give a crap about Bonobo vs KParts, they just want to know
> why the app gstreamer doesn't seem to be able to sit in the KDE
> taskbar like Joan down the street does on HER desktop.

  Well, in theory, standards can address the issue of multiple
choices.  There actually is a standard for that task bar tray icon
stuff, which demonstrates that standards can work in practice, too.
Fortunately, the FLOSS community has a lot of good reasons to like
standards.

  People in the 'doze world get pissed when X doesn't work with Y,
too.  Sometimes, they get even more pissed when they find out that it
doesn't work simply because Microsoft or Apple wanted to improve their
bottom line.

> And there is quite literally NOTHING you cannot do in 32 bit that
> you can in 64.

  Addressing more than 4 GB of RAM without memory
windowing/segmentation comes to mind....

>>   That's a so-called "killer app".  Entire industries have risen and
>> fallen on such things in the past.
>
> Name one killer app that killed the 386, or 486.

  It obviously hasn't happened, yet, and may never.  Duh.

  VisiCalc, the first mass-market spreadsheet program, is widely
credited for the commercial success of the Apple ][.

  With the IBM-PC, people point to Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Perfect.
There was a time when, if you saw an IBM-PC-compatible in an office,
you were nearly certain to see one of those two programs up on the
screen.

  It looks like networked digital music may totally reshape the music
"industry" (cartel).

  Desktop publishing and graphics put the Mac on the map, and is
largely responsible for keeping it there.

  It looks like VoIP might well reshape the voice telecom industry.

  Amesbury, MA, where I work, used to be a bustling city, because they
manufactured carriages (the horse-drawn kind).

  The Internet put the metered-service, "walled garden" online service
industry into the history books (Compuserve, MCI Mail, GEnie, Prodigy,
etc.).

  Shall I go on?  :)

-- Ben


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