Re: Overflows (lisp fixnum-bignum conversion)

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <01bc42b0$a88691c0$90f482c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com>,
Nick Roberts <Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>
>Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> wrote in article 
>> I won't complain if I can't allocate an array bigger than 2**32 bytes on
>> a machine that has a 32-bit address space.  That's a lot different from
>> telling me I can't allocate a 1000-bit integer on such a machine.
>
>
>In ten years time we'll all have 64-bit machines with hundreds of Gb of RAM
>(as well as content-addressed memory etc.) and look back at 32-bit
>addressing as ludicrously small. "How ever did we manage with such tiny
>amounts of memory?" we will ask each other ;-)

Perhaps, but the typical Ada, C++, Pascal, etc. compiler will *still*
not handle my 1000-bit integer correctly!  Lisp and Smalltalk, which
never had any problem with 1000-bit integers on 16-bit machines, will
*still* have no problem.

(By the way, in going from a 32-bit address to a 64-bit address, don't
think in terms of doubling the size of the address.  In fact, you're
multiplying the the size of the address space by about 4 billion, which
is an awful lot.  Much bigger than the switch from 16 to 32.  It's hard
for me to even imagine how big 2**64 bytes is.)

- Bob