Can Vista use all 4MB of RAM?

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Lessee....that works out to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. That's 18
quintillion and change, I think. Is the term for 2^64 bytes "exobyte"?

An "exabyte" (note the spelling) is 2^60. 2^64 is 18 exabytes.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

From: "Gene E. Bloch" <[email protected]>

That's NOT what I meant.

You were supposed to chuckle...

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Gene E. Bloch" <[email protected]>

| On 9/16/09, the entity David H. Lipman wrote this:
| You were supposed to chuckle...

I'm sorry... I only snickered

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Ken Blake, MVP" <[email protected]>



| An "exabyte" (note the spelling) is 2^60. 2^64 is 18 exabytes.

Ahhhhhhhh That's the term. Win64 addresses 18 Exabytes of memory.

What do you think of the chances we hit that ceiling in say 10 years ?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

From: "Ken Blake, MVP" <[email protected]>




| An "exabyte" (note the spelling) is 2^60. 2^64 is 18 exabytes.

Ahhhhhhhh That's the term. Win64 addresses 18 Exabytes of memory.

What do you think of the chances we hit that ceiling in say 10 years ?

I'm a terrible person to ask. <g> I've been terrible at making
forecasts like this in the past, and have almost always been
dramatically wrong.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

From: "Gene E. Bloch" <[email protected]>

I'm sorry... I only snickered

OTOH, you made me LOL.

I do prefer Marsing to Snickering, by the way, but Almond Joy is also
OK.

 

[Pauli Taglia]

bill thanks for the mail,but i did not post "read somewere"

He wasn't writing in reply to you, idiot.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:21:13 -0400, "David H. Lipman"



I'm a terrible person to ask. <g> I've been terrible at making
forecasts like this in the past, and have almost always been
dramatically wrong.

BTW, in talking about memory, engineers tend to use 1024 as the
'thousands' multiplier, so 2^64 should probably be called 16 EB (if
that's the right abbreviation). Disk drive makers (and marketers), of
course, like the number 18 that you used, as do physicists, who still
think a thousand is 10^3

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

BTW, in talking about memory, engineers tend to use 1024 as the
'thousands' multiplier, so 2^64 should probably be called 16 EB (if
that's the right abbreviation). Disk drive makers (and marketers), of
course, like the number 18 that you used, as do physicists, who still
think a thousand is 10^3

Note my standard message on of subject of whether a gigabyte is
1,000,000,000 bytes or 1,073,741,824 (in particular, note the last two
sentences):

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to
the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 120 billion byte drive is
actually a little under 112GB. Some people point out that the official
international standard defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not
1,073,741,824. Correct though they are, using the binary value of GB
is so well established in the computer world that I consider using the
decimal value of a billion to be deceptive marketing.

 

[Tim Slattery]

| An "exabyte" (note the spelling) is 2^60. 2^64 is 18 exabytes.

Ahhhhhhhh That's the term. Win64 addresses 18 Exabytes of memory.

If it used the full 64-bit address space, then it would address 18
exabytes. But the current implementations use 37 bits and address
only(!) 128GB.

What do you think of the chances we hit that ceiling in say 10 years ?

Who knows? I'm constantly amazed by this industry.

 

[Carl Kaufmann]

Note my standard message on of subject of whether a gigabyte is
1,000,000,000 bytes or 1,073,741,824 (in particular, note the last two
sentences):

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world

<pedant>
except networking, which also uses the decimal definitions.
</pedant>

, including Windows, defines it as 2 to

the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 120 billion byte drive is
actually a little under 112GB. Some people point out that the official
international standard defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not
1,073,741,824. Correct though they are, using the binary value of GB
is so well established in the computer world that I consider using the
decimal value of a billion to be deceptive marketing.

I consider it accurate communication. YMMV.

Carl
EAC Liar, Damned Liar, and Statistician

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Tim Slattery" <[email protected]>


| If it used the full 64-bit address space, then it would address 18
| exabytes. But the current implementations use 37 bits and address
| only(!) 128GB.

Really ?

I did not know that. Do you have a MS URL about that Tim ?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

<pedant>
except networking, which also uses the decimal definitions.
</pedant>

, including Windows, defines it as 2 to

I consider it accurate communication. YMMV.

Carl
EAC Liar, Damned Liar, and Statistician

Yes. They've been doing it since the Fall of Rome, so I, for one, know
that a GB on a hard drive is 10**9 bytes, not 1024**3 bytes.

But like you (Carl), I catch on quickly.

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Gene E. Bloch" <[email protected]>

| On 9/17/09, the entity Carl Kaufmann wrote this:
| Yes. They've been doing it since the Fall of Rome, so I, for one, know
| that a GB on a hard drive is 10**9 bytes, not 1024**3 bytes.

| But like you (Carl), I catch on quickly.

| --
| Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com


I have always looked at it as the unformatted capacity vs. the formatted capacity.

 

[Tim Slattery]

I did not know that. Do you have a MS URL about that Tim ?

Hmm..looks like I'm not quite right. 64-bit Vista maxes at 128GB, but
this page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx says that
64-bit Win7 maxes at 192GB. And the hugest version of Win2008 server
and Win2003 server will handle 2TB! Is there any hardware that will
support that much?

 

[Tim Slattery]

I have always looked at it as the unformatted capacity vs. the formatted capacity.

Which isn't correct. You use a tiny percentage to overhead when you
format. The difference you see is due to the decimal - binary units
thing.

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Tim Slattery" <[email protected]>


| Hmm..looks like I'm not quite right. 64-bit Vista maxes at 128GB, but
| this page:
| http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx says that
| 64-bit Win7 maxes at 192GB. And the hugest version of Win2008 server
| and Win2003 server will handle 2TB! Is there any hardware that will
| support that much?

Not yet but....

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Which isn't correct. You use a tiny percentage to overhead when you
format. The difference you see is due to the decimal - binary units
thing.

I was about to say the same thing, but you took the words out of my
mouth (or, in this case, off my fingers).

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I was about to say the same thing, but you took the words out of my
mouth (or, in this case, off my fingers).

And for an example with explicit numbers, look at a gigabyte. Using
1024, the number is 1073741824, and using 1000 it's 1000000000 (of
course). If the HD maker used binary units, he'd have to call his
decimal-gigabyte drive 931 megabytes. That's ~7% worth of marketing...

I'm too lazy to carry this out for exabytes, but the marketing bonus is
obviously gonna be huge. When we get there