OSDev.org

MessiahAndrw wrote:What would you use a 128-bit CPU for? It might take some time to reach the capacity of 64-bit address spaces, and while I can see the benefits to 128-bit registers (calculating galactic distances down to the millimetre in space simulators, etc.) this could be something better handled by a 128-bit ALU extension.

The RISC-V people have some valid points about a 128-bit CPU and outline its possible architecture. The main idea is that 128-bit addresses could be useful in large data centers to map the entire SSD storage to virtual memory, thus simplifying many operations in software (at the price of more sophisticated hardware).

Please define improve.

For mobile and embedded system, improvement may mean lower energy consumption, resilient, lower cost.

In the perspective of performance, the clock speed is reaching practical limit. So they seek for improvements from:
1. Doing more work in one tick (SIMD, wider operations, hard-wire for complex calculations)
2. Adding more core (parallelism)
3. Sustain longer before need of thermal throttling.

(1) affect compiler and cause less impact to programmer.
(2) would require new algorithm and models.