[Info-vax] OpenVMS I64 V8.1 "Evaluation Release"?

[Michael Kraemer]

glen herrmannsfeldt schrieb:

> 
> Yes, but how many really need 64 bits? How many computers sold
> today have more than 4GB of RAM? 

I can't quite understand that 64bit hype either.
Iirc throughout the 1990s there wasn't a single RISC workstation
which supported more than 2GB of RAM, not even those which
already had a 64bit CPU inside.
Only the very last of their kind, appearing in the first half
of the 2000s, could be stuffed with RAM exceeding 4GB.
Was there an Alpha WS with that much RAM?
Afaik even the XP's max out at 2GB.
So it seems there wasn't such a pressing need for 64bit.

> 
> For the real high-end servers that really need the large address
> space, IA64 might not have been so bad, but it seems to me that it
> took too long to get to market, partly because of the need for IA32
> compatibility. 

If one really desperately needed >4GB,
one could just as well have chosen
one of the mature 64bit RISC platforms.