so, 128-bit cpus coming up?

[tommo123]

http://www.gsmarena.com/arm_exec_confirms_64bit_exynos_cpu_hints_128bit_chips-news-7217.php

isn't the main reason for moving to 64bit due to address allocation? and aren't 64bit cpus capable of addressing huge amounts of memory? what's the point of 128 bit?

 

[Yuriman]

http://www.gsmarena.com/arm_exec_confirms_64bit_exynos_cpu_hints_128bit_chips-news-7217.php

isn't the main reason for moving to 64bit due to address allocation? and aren't 64bit cpus capable of addressing huge amounts of memory? what's the point of 128 bit?

I'm no electrical engineer, but I think the appropriate question to ask would be, "what are they referring to when they say 128bit?"

Example, there was some talk (advertising even?) that the Dreamcast was next-generation to the Nintendo 64 in part because it was 128bit... meaning that it had a bus somewhere that was 128bits wide.

 

[Rakehellion]

Parallel processing. GPUs are already 128-bit and 256-bit.

 

[Rakehellion]

I'm no electrical engineer, but I think the appropriate question to ask would be, "what are they referring to when they say 128bit?"

Example, there was some talk (advertising even?) that the Dreamcast was next-generation to the Nintendo 64 in part because it was 128bit... meaning that it had a bus somewhere that was 128bits wide.

Yeah, bitness is a big marketing term. Chances are, the entire chip won't be 128-bit but will have a big vector unit or something.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

http://www.gsmarena.com/arm_exec_confirms_64bit_exynos_cpu_hints_128bit_chips-news-7217.php

isn't the main reason for moving to 64bit due to address allocation? and aren't 64bit cpus capable of addressing huge amounts of memory? what's the point of 128 bit?

SSE and its offspring already have some parts of the CPU doing 128-bit operations on 128-bit registers. Seems like you'd either be able to do that, or do multiple 64-bit operations in parallel.

 

[Exophase]

The writer is insane and clearly misinterpreting something (or pulling it out of nowhere). No, it's not sufficient for there to merely be "something" inside the core that's 128-bit - for example, the original Cortex-A8 could perform many integer SIMD operations 128-bits wide at a time and had a 128-bit bus to L1 icache. It is ostensibly not considered a 128-bit processor by anyone.

 

[SKORPI0]

Parallel processing. GPUs are already 128-bit and 256-bit.

That's memory bus/interface, not integers or addresses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/256-bit
http://voices.yahoo.com/128-bit-versus-256-bit-pc-video-card-memory-interface-3289088.html

 

[ShintaiDK]

128bit CPUs makes no sense currently. And I am sure 64bit CPUs would be faster for quite some years to put it mildly.

CPUs already use 128 and 256bit instructions when there is a performance benefit. And up to 512bit with Skylake. Its a bit of the rerun with 32bit vs 64bit. Most of the performance benefit is already harvested via SSE instructions and so on.

As others have aired. It does sound like marketing PR. Just like in the old days with consoles. 128bit Dreamcast as an example. Reality a 32bit CPU. And the only 128bit part was a cache.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Thought the SH-4's FPU was 128 bit wide?

 

[Exophase]

Thought the SH-4's FPU was 128 bit wide?

Yes, but only for a dot product instruction and a matrix transformation instruction (that's effectively the same as running four of those dot product instructions). And the results of these computations aren't fully accurate (to the limits of the floating point registers).

 

[Blitzvogel]

Yes, but only for a dot product instruction and a matrix transformation instruction (that's effectively the same as running four of those dot product instructions). And the results of these computations aren't fully accurate (to the limits of the floating point registers).

Oh, wasn't sure if it could do 2 x 64 or just 4 x 32 bit.

 

[Tsavo]

All this even bitness needs to stop. Computing will move forward the day we get 67.3 bit processors.

 

[Rakehellion]

That's memory bus/interface, not integers or addresses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/256-bit
http://voices.yahoo.com/128-bit-versus-256-bit-pc-video-card-memory-interface-3289088.html

GPUs don't work much with integers and 128-bit addressing is needless, but there are 128-bit vectors.

 

[PliotronX]

64-bit was kinda hard to find a need for, if it weren't for the 4GB RAM limitation I wouldn't be using 64-bit. 128-bit is right out like counting for the holy hand grenade of antioche.