4 ms·
64 bits of addressing is actually much more than most (any?) actually-existing processors have, for the simple reason that there is little demand for processors
by ElevenLathe 4y ago
64 bits of addressing is actually much more than most (any?) actually-existing processors have, for the simple reason that there is little demand for processors that can address 16 exabytes of memory and all those address lines still cost money.
- FullyFunctional 4y agoMore to the point, storing the pointers cost memory. Switching from 32-bit to 64-bit effectively halved the caches for pointer-rich programs. AMD64 was a win largely due to all the things they did to compensate (including doubling the number of registers).