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128 bits of address space would be useful if you're building an architecture with one level of storage. And there actually has been one family of computers tha
by kryptiskt 2y ago
128 bits of address space would be useful if you're building an architecture with one level of storage.
And there actually has been one family of computers that have used 128-bit pointers. IBM S/38 and its successors did that. It has a machine independent instruction set that is then compiled down to actual machine code, and that uses 128-bit pointers for future proofing.
- cduzz 2y agoI thought this was where optane was going to take us, back to the days of "your memory is also your persistent storage" like an old PDP/8 with core memory...
- RetroTechie 2y agoThere have been a few research OSes designed around a concept of "all memory is persistent". Iirc this allows some simplifications. For example, no need for a file system: the copy-from-disk-to-RAM is pointless when there's no difference between RAM & disk. This didn't catch on as the tech to make it practical wasn't there. And existing OSes were 'good enough' due to memory-mapped files, smart caching techniques etc. Plus boatloads of software using that. But if all background storage were treated as one giant RAM, I could see some cloud/AI big boys crossing that 64-bit size boundary. Or some science/engineering projects like CERN. That said: it's the apps, really. If OS + biggest app working sets easily fit in a 64-bit address space, then why throw 2x the bits at it? And disk <-> RAM transfers (+filesystems, cache etc) are a solved problem.