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'.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 07 2000 - 21:00:05 EST