Is there such thing as a 64bit/128bit CPU currently? -nt-

[Toxin]

nt

 

[8008S]

The PS2's emotion chip is 128bit.

 

[pyr]

the alpha is 64bits. the most amazing performance too.. was far ahead of its time until compaq screwed up the DEC purchase.

 

[Pyro]

Sparcs are 64bit too.

 

[Toxin]

Sparcs are from Sun.. right?

 

[Goi]

Yup, Sparcs are from Sun. SGI MIPS are 64bit too. Basically almost all RISC based chips are 64bit except PPC.

 

[Sunner]

Its funny how people say Compaq screwed up DEC, while never stating how exactly.

Whats screwed up about DEC(or rather, what was once DEC), the EV7 is on its way, and the EV8 is in development, and Compaq is doing their best to gather support for it.

 

[VladTrishkin]

Intel's iTanium and AMD's Sledgehammer are 64bit as well.

 

[Modus]

Read a little about microprocessor architecture and you'll see that 64 bit CPU's are nothing spectacular. In fact, they don't even improve performance.

All a CPU must do to be considered 64 bit is allow for 64 bit memory addressing. Now, that sounds great, but in reality it's overkill. Our current 32 bit CPU's can address up to 4 gigabytes of main memory. There are very, very few places where more than 4G of main memory is needed. A 64 bit CPU would simply square that number, extending addressable memory to an insane amount.

Now, the other property of most 64 bit CPU's is the width of their registers (tiny bits of temporary storage to hold small values as they are manipulated). Fortunately, modern 32 bit CPU's have allowed for 64 bit integer and floating point registers for a while now.

And as for bandwidth, all current CPU's have 64bit data paths to the chipset and main memory.

Modus

 

[HaVoC]

Go forth and be enlightened, my son...

Ace's articles on UltraSPARC

Ace's on Alpha

 

[pm]

Sunner: Compaq's dithering over whether or not they are an Alpha server provider, an Itanium provider, or a Xeon provider have left a lot of customers in the dark and have lost them a lot of good employees. A lot of projects have suffered sizable delays. Wildfire still isn't available and it was originally slated to be released 2 years ago IIRC. Alpha has always had a substantial lead over other server and workstation parts in performance, but that lead has been gradually narrowing. Alpha still suffers from a lack of clarity from Compaq's executives. The VP in charge of the Alpha will say one thing and Compaq's CEO will say another (don't ask for specific examples, it's happened a few times in the past, but I don't want to spend my afternoon researching this just so that I can prove that this is true). The whole transition could have been handled better in my opinion.

As far as 64-bit CPUs: HP's PA-RISC should be added to the list.

 

[Pyro]

lets not forget the 256bit geforce and radeon chips....

 

[slpaulson]

Pyro: they are talking about cpus.