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dos2unix

dos2unix

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As a side note: Supposedly IBM is working on a 128 bit PowerPC.
They estimate it won't be ready for the consumer market for at least another 10 years.
Current price - $720,000.00 US. That's a little out of my budget range.
But I'm sure @KGIII and @wizardfromoz will probably have 3 or 4 of these soon. :)

I wonder what OS this will run?
 
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dos2unix said:
As a side note: Supposedly IBM is working on a 128 bit PowerPC.
They estimate it won't be ready for the consumer market for at least another 10 years.if
Current price - $720,000.00 US. That's a little out of my budget range.
But I'm sure @KGIII and @wizardfromoz will probably have 3 or 4 of these soon. :)

I wonder what OS this will run?
Click to expand...
if @wizardfromoz gets his hands on it, all of them
 
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I ain't spending that much on a computer. You can buy a pretty sweet car with that, several of 'em really.

From what I understand, there's really no need for 128 bits in general computing. The address space is just so vast that we're not going to use it all any time soon. It's kinda like how we'll pretty much never run out of IPv6 addresses. (There's a whole lotta available addresses for both of 'em.)

Lemme see if I can find something online...

This site is moderately interesting:

www.pcmag.com

Definition of 128-bit computing

What does 128-bit computing actually mean? Find out inside PCMag's comprehensive tech and computer-related encyclopedia.
www.pcmag.com www.pcmag.com
 
Being that IBM is developing it. Bet it will run Redhat :)
 
I was watching a football (American) game on TV and it had an IBM commercial that mentioned Red Hat (two words, by the way, though I could have sworn it was once one word). I was pretty surprised. The end of the ad only showed IBM's logo but they mentioned a combination of the two as a way to find solutions. I was kinda expecting a Red Hat logo along with the IBM logo, but it was just the IBM logo.

I don't normally watch much TV (until the pandemic), so I was pretty surprised.
 
KGIII said:
From what I understand, there's really no need for 128 bits in general computing.
Click to expand...

18 quintillion bytes of RAM might seem excessive today... but it wasn't long ago, someone said 640k ought to be enough
for anyone!. (I'd like to see the motherboard that holds 18Q of RAM.)

Did Gates Really Say 640K is Enough For Anyone?

Earlier this week, in a column on Bill Gates, fellatio and media, and how all three relate to a profile of Gates in last week's Time magazine, this column daringly offered free software into the millennium to anyone who remembers one thing Bill Gates ever said. We were taking issue with the...
www.wired.com www.wired.com

In all seriousness, NASA star maps and stellar imaging are starting to get pretty hefty.
Try building a database with spatial data for 400 billion stars.

I remember my Commodore +16 with 16k of RAM. Then my Commodore 64.
Then my Apple II with 128k. I eventually got a 286 with 2meg. My first hard drive
(you wouldn't believe the size of it) was a whopping 5meg!!

I think I still have a old monochrome Mac with 32meg of RAM. It's amazing what you could do with 32meg.
I'm pretty sure more Mac II was the first system with 1GB of RAM. That was going to last forever.

128 bits may not happen soon. But It'll happen eventually. Some our servers in our datacenter
have 2T RAM, and 512T of disk space. 20 years ago, who would've thought that?
 
Yep, the Old stuff sure didn't have much ram - and no one back then would have thought we would ever need Gbs of ram today.
128 bit machines will be used in servers within the next 5 to 10 years I'll bet. We will see.

My Brother in Law worked for IBM for 27 years and His son now works for Red hat. He used to say IBM did not develop anything they thought would not make an extra dime :)
So if they are working on it they have an idea in mind for how it will be used.
 
dos2unix said:
but it wasn't long ago, someone said 640k ought to be enough
Click to expand...

That'd be why I said 'general computing'. We may see a use for 128 bits eventually, particularly with cryptography. Though, 64 bit can handle up to 16 exabits. (That's 1.6e+10 GB, or 16 *trillion* GB!) So, we should be okay for a while longer.
 
kc1di said:
128 bit machines will be used in servers within the next 5 to 10 years I'll bet.
Click to expand...

I'll take that bet, though we gotta define 'used'. Say, more than 10%?

$50 to your nearest animal shelter or AWAP, which ever you prefer.

(Assuming I'm alive then.)
 
kc1di said:
My Brother in Law worked for IBM for 27 years and His son now works for Red hat. He used to say IBM did not develop anything they thought would not make an extra dime :)
Click to expand...
People will buy almost anything.

I'm guilty of it and still ain't learned. :D
 
KGIII said:
That'd be why I said 'general computing'. We may see a use for 128 bits eventually, particularly with cryptography. Though, 64 bit can handle up to 16 exabits. (That's 1.6e+10 GB, or 16 *trillion* GB!) So, we should be okay for a while longer.
Click to expand...
I'd blow out the few brain cells I have left if I even try to figure or understand what the hell you just said. :p :D
 
Bartman said:
I'd blow out the few brain cells I have left if I even try to figure or understand what the hell you just said. :p :D
Click to expand...

More simply: 64 bit can handle a butt-ton of data. Like, you could have a system with trillions of GB of RAM. That's a REALLY big number. The experts whom I have read all pretty much agree that there's no need for anything bigger. It's not like the jump from 16 or 32 bit, those had real limitations. At these values, those for 64 bit, those limitations aren't realistic.

It's much like IPv4 vs IPv6. Even when IPv4 was new, we knew we'd need something else eventually. That's why we have IPv6. IPv6 should never run out, even if we colonized half the known universe! Well, maybe if we colonized half the known universe. That too is a pretty damned big number!
 
By the way, IPv6 has 36 trillion trillion trillion (3.4 x 10^38) possible combinations.

Those numbers, as well as the numbers for 64 bit, are so large the human brain can't really picture them. You'd not be able to tell 3.5 trillion jelly beans from 4 trillion jelly beans.
 
KGIII said:
You'd not be able to tell 3.5 trillion jelly beans from 4 trillion jelly beans.
Click to expand...
I think my waist line would.
KGIII said:
That too is a pretty damned big number!
Click to expand...
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” [HHGTG}
 
KGIII said:
I'll take that bet, though we gotta define 'used'. Say, more than 10%?

$50 to your nearest animal shelter or AWAP, which ever you prefer.

(Assuming I'm alive then.)
Click to expand...
I'd take you up on that but at my age I would most likely not be around to see it. So you'd be out :)
 
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kc1di said:
I'd take you up on that but at my age I would be around to see it. So you'd be out :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not quite sure I'm gonna live that much further.

I have been less than kind to my body.
 
KGIII said:
Those numbers, as well as the numbers for 64 bit, are so large the human brain can't really picture them. You'd not be able to tell 3.5 trillion jelly beans from 4 trillion jelly beans.
Click to expand...
I offer the following analogy to try to grasp how big one trillion of anything is. Keep in mind that the US National Debt is now over $31T (source).

1,000,000 = 1 million
1,000,000,000 = 1 billion
1,000,000,000,000 = 1 trillion

If we paid one million dollars per day, each and every day, to pay off just one trillion dollars of our national debt... how long would it take us?

1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) divided by 1,000,000 (one million) per day... equals 1,000,000 (one million days).

1,000,000 (days) divided by 365 (days in a year) equals 2,739 years.

(Excludes interest, leap years, and rounding.)

Feel better? :eek:
 
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