Am I 32-bit, or 64-bit?

[michael miller]

The '60s vintage CDC machines like the 3600 & 6500 used 48 bit OSs. 

Mike Miller


 Thu, 2012-04-05 at 12:25 -0400, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> "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.
>