News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The prospects for 128 bit processors (John R. Mashey, 1995). Parent comment

Re:The prospects for 128 bit processors (John R. Mashey, 1995) by acchow on Tuesday May 21, 2024 @04:54PM (#40433779)
We need 166 bits to address each atom on Earth uniquely. We won't need to go beyond that until we are interplanetary.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The prospects for 128 bit processors (John R. Mashey, 1995) by mrb on Tuesday May 21, 2024 @05:36PM (#40434306)
You are assuming each atom represents one bit. But each atom could represent 2^N states (charge, spin, location, etc) in which case you could store 2^(166+N) bits on Earth!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The prospects for 128 bit processors (John R. Mashey, 1995) by acchow on Tuesday May 21, 2024 @06:03PM (#40434618)
I was referring to addressing each atom individually. Indeed, you could possibly store more than 1 bit of information at each address. Maybe call it an "atombyte".

Similarly in computer RAM, we don't address each "bit" individually but actually each "byte" (8 bits). Or maybe we address each word?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The prospects for 128 bit processors (John R. Mashey, 1995) by IncreasePosts on Tuesday May 21, 2024 @05:40PM (#40434361)
I guess I'll never be able to individually label my quarks and gluons. Pity.
[ Parent | on HN ]