On 18/07/12 00:51, Galt Barber wrote: > Jim has said in another email that he will not make a > blat version that uses 64-bit pointers until most machines > ship with >16GB ram.
Hi, Galt. I'm puzzled by that, because most machines now use 64-bit CPU's and unless you're using PAE you can't access more than 2GB under M$ Windows or 3GiB under 32-bit Linux. If you want to access >4GiB you can only do that using 64-bit pointers. I'm quite confused by all this, but then I'm new to BLAT - I do understand the need to keep everything 32-bit in BLAT to achieve optimal speed and memory efficiency, but 64-bit BLAT is still a superb alternative to BLAST on a 64-bit processor. Citing an arbitrary RAM size as justification for not supporting a 64-bit version of BLAT is uncomfortably reminiscent of the statement apparently not made by Bill Gates that "640K ought to be enough for anybody"... BTW, none of this puts me off using BLAT - I think it's excellent! Tony. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. _______________________________________________ Genome maillist - [email protected] https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome
