At 04:50 PM 10/26/98 +0000, Todd Lewis wrote:
>The first 32bit intel processor was introduced around '88 -89'.
>the 486.
Actually the 386 was fully 32-bit. The 286 was partly 32-bit.
>It wasn't really fully utilized for 5 years.
Depends on the software. I was using some 32-bit stuff just after I got my
386.
>to deal with the OS DOS was designed for 8bit originally and then
>extended through creative programming.
DOS is 16-bit.
>I'm not ruling out 128bit chips.
There are several ways to measure the chip - internal data, external data,
addressing, and instruction length. It would help us a lot to have 128-bit
(or
more) arithmetic. 128-bit addressing would be vast overkill for the
foreseeable future. AFAIK, 64-bit instructions will be fine, until you get to
the point of putting several instructions into one word. So it seems possible
that we would have 128-bit arithmetic and data, but 64-bit addressing and
instructions.
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| Jud McCranie [EMAIL PROTECTED] or @camcat.com |
| |
| Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 19,000 |
| vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future |
| may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh |
| 1.5 tons. -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949. |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
