Today I was reminded that with Apple's next release of Mac OS X 10.8, they are formally dropping all non-64-bit clean Macs, even including macs that are less than 4 years old. Already all new PCs are 64-bit, and almost all of the, use UEFI or some post-BIOS firmware.
And then that's it. 64 bit of addressable memory should be more than enough for the next few decades, if not more. This isn't just bad speculation I will laugh at looking back at this post in a few years, but more that by doubling the number of bits, you've just moved from max 4 billion to, err, 18 quintillion. You can fit the entire Internet a few billion times in that.
Each doubling of the bits was a new era on its own. I was born in the 8-bits era, with 16-bits in the late 80s, then moving to 32-bits in the 90s, each time bringing compatibility issues. Even game consoles were (erroneously) identified by their "bits" (not memory space actually, but rather how many bits could fit in a single register). But as desktops move to 64 bits, only the cheap tablets and smartphones remain at 32 for a few years. The benefits of a large addressing space are quite technical (and cool), but for the rest of us, the limit on the amount of RAM you can put in your computer just keeps increasing at a normal pace. And apart from this weird choice between the 32 and 64 bits version of Windows, most people won't even notice give how smooth the transition were.
Next step, IPv4, at 32 bits, to IPv6, at 128 bits, could change the nature of the Internet, all the while we have actually run out of IP addresses for new Internet connections. But at this point, with this kind of addressing space, every single molecule on Earth could be connected to the Internet.
Published on July 11, 2012 at 21:40 EDT
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