short answer to technical question?

[Andy Green]

Berna Massingill wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 02:26:12PM -0600, Nix, Robert P. wrote:

>>> Actually, in this case 32 bit and 64 bit refer not to the natural
>>> word size, but to the address size. i.e. a 32 bit machine uses a 32

> There was also an earlier era (late 1970s and before) in which these
> machines used 32-bit words but only 24-bit addresses, reserving an

> There's probably a lesson here for future architects, something along

FWIW Athlon 64 is true 64 bit internally and on the data bus, but has
only a 48 bit virtual address bus and 40 bit physical.

But at least they didn't overload the remaining currently unused bits in
the pointers with special meanings doomed to get overwritten in the next
upgrade :-)

-Andy
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