[Info-vax] OT: IA-128 ???

[Marc Schlensog]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:54:53 -0600
Keith Parris <keithparris_nospam at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > There are some speculation that the 128 bit being
> > mentioned is for the file systems.
> 
> Reports are circulating that a Microsoft researcher's LinkedIn
> profile (since deleted) said he was "working to get IA-128 working
> backwards with full binary compatibility on the existing IA-64
> instructions in the hardware simulation to work for Windows 8 and
> definitely Windows 9.”
> 
> Doesn't sound like file-system work to me. :-)

This would imply that Intel is working on a 128bit version of Itanium.
Sounds highly unlikely to me :)
I also don't think that they are talking about 128bit CPUs in a
traditional sense. Maybe some 128bit extensions for multimedia/SIMD,
but not a 128bit CPU in the sense that it gets 128bit registers all
around, a theoretical address space of 128bit, etc. That simply doesn't
make sense.
A 128bit file system would be an entirely different story. But you
don't need a 128bit CPU for that.