128 bit operating system
July 26, 2009 at 4:46 PM
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alex
A few days ago, I finally started moving to 64 bit operating system and started thinking about 64 bit software components most of the time. This brought a set of problems with current components which I'm dealing with such as different utilities, drivers, and others. Do we have to have this kind of pain when we will be switching to 128 bit components? Do we ever need to think about 128 bit? Let me put forth some thoughts about it.
Currently, there are few places where we have exposed 128 bit constructs in order to alleviate those problems which we're currently facing. One of the most common is a need to identify something uniquely, and a structure called GUID was invented. It allowed us to overcome shortcomings of the auto-incremental ids or situations where we don't have control over the authority which can assign unique identifiers and guaranty their uniqueness to the appropriate probability. Another widely accepted application of 128 bit is encription where the long keys are increasing the strength of the ciphers. There are rudimentary appearencies of the 128 bit registers in processors such as IBM AS/370, and some recent developments from Sony related to physics simulations in consumer market devices.
Let's think for a moment where we can use 128 bit systems, which would allow us to store and manipulate humongous amounts of information? Nowadays, we store all information in databases, and if Oracle's 128 developments will go mainstream, we can address even more abmiguous plans! Actually, Oracle does support 128 databases in terms of storage. Although, there are no 128 operating systems yet available on the market. Another trend is that it brings some possibility to store entire internet in your computer hard drive and being able to access and manipulate all this data momentarily!