Time for 64-bit longs?

[bzs at bu-cs.UUCP]

>Even assuming you meant 128-bit address,just what do you propose doing with
>that pointer?  Going to assign every quark in the universe its own address?
>
>--j.a.tainter

Being as this type of thing comes up so often consider a machine who's
HARDWARE supports the following virtual address space:

(assume BITSnn is a derived nn-bit scalar type to avoid confusion)

	struct pointer {
		BITS32	NodeAddress;		/* address on network */
		struct device {
			BITS16	MajorDevice;	/* type of device */
			BITS16	MinorDevice;	/* which of that type */
		}
		BITS64	Offset;			/* memory, seekptr etc */
	};

and assume a hardware instruction set that really could utilize such
pointers to address any disk, tape, memory etc on a large network.

Nahh, 128-bits isn't enough cuz 32-bits isn't enough for the segmented
network space...

Is that really too wild? I don't think so.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University