this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Why hasn't 128 bit been introduced yet? (alien.top)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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x86 came out 1978,

21 years after, x64 came out 1999

we are three years overdue for a shift, and I don't mean to arm. Is there just no point to it? 128 bit computing is a thing and has been in the talks since 1976 according to Wikipedia. Why hasn't it been widely adopted by now?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

The world's biggest super computer, Frontier, has 9,2 PB of RAM. It's not available to one CPU, so no need to address everything in one address space, but let's say it is. That still leaves room to build around 1 000 times more RAM into that theoretical CPU. I'm not sure we would be able to build such a computer today. One that needs more than ~10 000 PB RAM to address, which is what 128 bits means.

Sure, RAM isn't the only reason for bigger address space, but there are also other ways to handle data beyond one address space. For the consumer, we are far from there.