64bit data 128Bit address...Re: Building a Z-80 (64bit!

From: Philip.Belben_at_pgen.com <(Philip.Belben_at_pgen.com)>
Date: Tue Oct 27 10:12:13 1998

>> I therefore see address buses growing at 16 bits every 30 years. That's
>> just over a bit every 2 years - slower than I expected but not much.
>> Someone (I forget who) said that memory chips double in capacity every
18
>> months. This would give 16 bits in 24 years.
>
> Interesting szenario, especialy when connected to the Mores Law
> (didn't he tell this regarding integration ?).
Thanks. That's the one I'm thinking of - the amount of memory you get on
the same area of silicon doubles every 18 months. Apply it to the memory
sizes of computers and it seems to work: in 1974 a small computer was a
PDP-11/05 with perhaps 16 K bytes of memory (up to 56 K if you were lucky,
IIRC). 24 years later = 16 * 18 months, a small computer is a pentiyuck PC
with rather less than 2^^16 * 16 K = 1 gigabyte, but not that much less. A
computer in the same market slot as the 11/05 is perhaps a Sparcstation, in
which a gig of memory is by no means out of the question...

> Hmm I will have my 88th by then - jets join :)
Your place or mine? :-) :-)


Philip.
Received on Tue Oct 27 1998 - 10:12:13 GMT