From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9a586954b11ae008 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) Subject: Re: Overflows (lisp fixnum-bignum conversion) Date: 1997/04/07 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 231292018 References: <1997Apr2.202514.1843@nosc.mil> <01bc42b0$a88691c0$90f482c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-04-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <01bc42b0$a88691c0$90f482c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com>, Nick Roberts wrote: > > >Robert A Duff 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