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From: david@daisy.UUCP (David Schachter)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k
Subject: Re: 24 vs. 32 Bits
Message-ID: <84@daisy.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Mar-85 06:56:15 EST
Article-I.D.: daisy.84
Posted: Thu Mar  7 06:56:15 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Mar-85 07:47:14 EST
References: <350@oakhill.UUCP>
Reply-To: david@daisy.UUCP (David Schachter)
Organization: Daisy Systems Corp., Mountain View, Ca
Lines: 23

In article 350@oakhill.UUCP, Michael Cruess of the Motorola Microprocessor
Products division responds to an earlier posting of mine thusly:
>In other words, you will not be needing more than 24 bits of addressing for
>3  years.  Considering  how much flak all microprocessor vendors take about
>how long it takes to bring a product into full production,  you  should  be
>glad  that we are starting now.  Also, re: ">16 MB":  I still maintain that
>in  discussing  microprocessor  address  pins  we  are  discussing  logical
>(virtual)  addresses  (as  opposed  to physical (real) addresses), and that
>logical spaces of more that 2^24 bytes are required by our  customers.  The
>amount  of  physical  memory is not relevant.
>
1) Intel managed to get its 80286 into full production a year after delivering
   working samples to customers.  Surely Motorola won't take three years for
   the 68020, will it?  (*-)
2) How many chips in the 80286 class or above are going into sockets in which
   address spaces >16MB are required?  Less than 1/10 of 1 percent?  Until
   large address spaces are routinely needed in the microworld, (about three
   years for us workstation vendors), 32 bit addressing is overkill.
3) Whether virtual or physical is immaterial.  We don't need 32 bit addressing
   yet (in 99.9 % of the sockets.)  We don't need it in the virtual space or
   in the physical space.  We will in three years or so.  By then, Moto, Natty
   Semi, and even Intel will have 32 bit machines.  (Intel's 80386 is due for
   customer sampling in the first quarter of 1986, as of three weeks ago.)