Am I 32-bit, or 64-bit?

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

"Brian St. Pierre" <brian at bstpierre.org> writes:
>
> On 04/05/2012 09:20 AM, Ken D'Ambrosio wrote:
> > But... i386 seems to be missing as a possible architecture.  The closest I
> > could find was x86.  But this concerned me, because x86_64's bzImage is a soft
> > link to x86's.  Anyway, "What the hell," I thought, and compiled it.  Installed
> > it.  Booted it.  And it works great!  Until I went to install Chrome.  Chrome
> > said, "You're running a 64-bit OS; here's your 64-bit version."  I tried
> > installing that, and no soup.  32-bit version installed fine.  So then I
> > glanced at "uname -a":
> 
> Split the difference and call yourself 48-bit? ;)

You think you're joking, but it worked for ATM:

    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode>

    ATM broke up all packets, data, and voice streams into 48-byte
    chunks, adding a 5-byte routing header to each one so that they
    could be reassembled later. [...] parties from the United States
    wanted a 64-byte payload because this was felt to be a good
    compromise in larger payloads optimized for data transmission and
    shorter payloads optimized for real-time applications like voice;
    parties from Europe wanted 32-byte payloads because the small size
    (and therefore short transmission times) simplify voice
    applications with respect to echo cancellation. [...] 48 bytes
    (plus 5 header bytes = 53) was chosen as a compromise between the
    two sides. 5-byte headers were chosen because it was thought that
    10% of the payload was the maximum price to pay for routing
    information.

-- 
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