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On 5 Jan 00, at 15:37, Bill Wendling wrote: > Also sprach Dominik Kubla: > } On Wed, Jan 05, 2000 at 03:32:53PM -0500, Richard B. Johnson wrote: > } ... > } > I think that before 38 years is up, none of us will be using > } > 32-bit machines so, even if I was 10 years old, I wouldn't bother > } > 'fixing' 32-bit machines. Even Intel's new stuff is 64 bits. > } > } Incidentally this is the exact argument that reportedly was used > } against those who warned about the Y2K problen in late > } seventies/early eighties! > } > There's certainly a correlation (sp?) between the two and it would be > ironic if it happened again. However, here's why I think it won't: > > Noone uses old machines for very long. How many of you are still using > a PDP-10 (30+ years ago) or an Apple classic (20- years ago) for > "real" work? > > I'll put my foot squarly in my mouth and predict that, in 38 years, > people will think that running anything on a machine less than 1GHz > speed for a production machine is nothing short of insanity. > > But, then, there are always the hobbyists...but, then, they can "fix" > the kernel themselves? :) > > Bill I realize that CPUs are speeding up at an amazing rate, but being in the semiconductor industry, I know that the technology is reaching a minimun size because we are approaching atomic dimensions. Since speed is not only about power, but how far you have to go, an essential factor in increasing speed is to decrease the distance you have to go. Then add the fact that most motherboards are essentialy a bunch of RF transmission lines, I honestly don't see hardware speeding up much more. At 1 Ghz, we are talking about waveguides, not wires. Add this to the fact that many old 486s have been 'revived' with Linux, and I think we will still have 32-bit CPUs around come the year 2038. The argument that we won't have to deal with it in xx years sure sounds like the same one that got us into Y2K in the first place. They say oh, but this is different because.....I don't know that I buy into that. It seems to me it is more an issue that 'we have too many other problems, and maybe that one will go away before we have to deal with it'. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ | ||||||||||||
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