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

[Ben Scott]

On 2/17/07, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
>  .....  The only limitation to a 16 bit processor is being limited to
> 64 KB of data per page at a time.

  Right, just as the beggar's only limitation is that he has no money.

>> But it's [16-bit limitation workarounds] so slow, cumbersome,
>> and error-prone as to be a significant obstacle.
>
>   Which is why different kinds of embedded systems will use multiple
> smaller scale processors.

  Fine if you're building something application specific.  Not so much
if it's a general-purpose computer.  It the ASIC route was magic
business pixie dust, we'd all be using Amiga's.

> A UI doesn't need more then 16 bits for most applications.

  Perhaps not for the UI in the sense of buttons and widgets.  True
color graphics kind of suck in the 16-bit space, though.  (Sure, it
can be done.  Putting a man on the moon using a really big pile of
dynamite could probably be done.  Doesn't mean it's a good way to do
it.)

  Moving beyond the UI, there's plenty that benefits from being able
to count to higher than 65535 in a CPU register, or being able to work
on more than 64 KB of stuff at a time.  For example, I suspect
implementing real-time MPEG2 decoding in the Intel 8501 would be
difficult.  Sure, lots of bitty boxes use bitty CPUs, but they have
ASICs with wide pipes instead.

  I'm not trying to say small chips are useless or dead or passe, just
that big chips are can enable more than "bigger and faster".

>>   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.
>
> Only in the fact that it was faster ...

  Um.  Perhaps you never worked with "Windows/286".

>   And a good reason to completely disregard them because 'Gnome Sux,
> KDE Rulez!

  Do you have a relevant point, here?

> We have yet to see how that's going to play out, however.  But
> generally, anything that doesn't work like 'Doze does, doesn't fly
> very well.

  They said that for years and years about 1-2-3 and WP and NetWare.

  The "network effect", AKA "installed base", is a very real thing.
It takes something significant to overcome it.  Which was what I was
attempting to look at: Is there anything significant on the horizon?
But we're all looking backwards or down instead of ahead for some
reason.

>>> 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....
>
>   Those are possibilities that address the issue.

  Such as?  Serious question; I'm at most a very casual student of
micro-architectures, so I don't know.  I enjoy learning, though.  So
educate me.  :)

>   Hehehe.  And Windowz is also sometimes credited for the success of
> the Pentium.  Does that define it as a killer app?

  Perhaps.  Indeed, Microsoft bloat has powered quite a bit of
hardware sales.  Have you seen the recommended system configurations
for Vista?  Supercomputers modeling the Earth's climate need less
power.

>>  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.
>
>   Or where they simply the defacto standard apps people used for
> productivity, and had little to do with IBM-PC?

  That's the whole freaking point!  :-)  A "killer app" isn't
necessarily intrinsic to the thing it boosts; it's just responsible
for the widespread adoption.

> If they where available for the Apple ][, would we all be using Mac's?

  Quite likely, yes.  And bitching about how Apple's monopoly sucks.

> This is fun, but I suspect some list members may be
> telling us to STFU soon enough.

  I note that the silence is deafening.  Perhaps we should take this
off-list?  :-)

-- Ben