this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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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

No need. 32 bit became a hindrance because a 32 bit address bus can only address up to 4GB of RAM.

A 64 bit address bus can address up to 16 EB of RAM. Exabytes. To get there we would need to pass Gigabytes, Terabytes, and Petabytes of RAM capacity before we get to Exabytes.

That is a limit that we simply will never hit, at least not with silicon based computers.