On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 17:30 -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 04:09:59PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: > > http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/jbayko/cpu5.html#Sec5Part4 > > "Part IV: IBM RS/6000 POWER chips (1990). . . ." > > "Thirty two 32-bit registers were defined for the POWER1 integer > > unit, which also included certain string operations, as well as > > all load/store operations." > > Blah blah blah POWER2 > > "It was superceded by the POWER3 (Early 1998), with eight functional > > units (two FPU, three integer (two single cycle, one multicycle), > > two load/store, and branch unit), but capable of operating at much > > higher clock speeds. In addition, a 64 bit version, the PowerPC > > A35 (Apache), was designed for the AS/400 E series" > > > > So, the first 64 bit POWER chips arrived 8 years after the 32 > > bit versions. > > 1998 seems like a fairly resonable time to start getting into 64bit. I > guess it does indicate the power wasn't designed as 64bit to begin with, > but seems to have been designed well enough that extending it later was > reasonable to do. As Ben mentioned, Alpha and DEC OSF/1 (a.k.a. Digital Unix a.k.a tru64) have been 64 bit since 1992. We've been running Alpha/VMS since 1995. > > > Well, sparc64 has been around an awful long time. Adding PAE-like hacks seems > > > > Since 1995. > > > > There were largish SMP SPARC32 boxen for many years before the > > SPARC64 came into existence. I can't find any references on the > > web, but some of those big boxen had to have more than 4GB RAM. > > I wonder how much 4GB ram would have cost in 1995 or even 1998. I > remember getting 16M for a 486 for $600 in 1992. I think it was 1996 > when I got 128M for about the same amount. The price lists I found once > for Decstation 5000 boxes had ram listed at around $50000 for 128M in > 1991. > > Even in 1995 4GB would have been a rather expensive amount of ram even > for a high end sparc or power machine. If you're a big company buying a box with 16 or 32 CPUs... -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson, LA USA PGP Key ID 8834C06B "What has a tiny brain, a big mouth, and an opinion nobody cares about? You!" from Murphy Brown
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