Why we don’t have 128 bit OS or CPUs?

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Why we don’t have 128 bit OS or CPUs?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

there will never be a 128 bit os because there is no need.

you may find it shocking, but we currently dont even have true 64 bit cpus, only about 40 some.

the bit number is how many addresses a computer has to use, which basically means “what is the max amount of ram.” with 32 bit, that is 2^(32) bytes or about 4GB. So we had to upgrade, but 64 bit could hold 2^64 bytes, or 18 Exabytes (1 exabyte is 1000 petabytes (1 peta byte is 1000 terabytes (1 terabyte is 1000 gigabytes))), according to estimates made by https://what-if.xkcd.com/63/ this is how much data is in all google servers combined. but in ram. We have already pretty much hit the max of what 1 cpu can benefit from. even servers cant really use more than 1TB of ram, and the way we make computers faster now is by clustering (taking smaller computers and making them work together) so even if you had a 18 exabyte dataset, no machine woukd ever need to load it all in ram.

additionaly, each bit you add is a physical wire you need to add, so since you dont need more than 1tb of ram, and 1tb is 2^40, there is not even a need to make a truely 64 bit cpu.

since the os expects a 64 bit cpu, the cpu just fakes it and pads its 40 bit addresses with 24 0 bits

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