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AMD's 64-bit Plot
ceebABC writes "In a long interview with eWEEK, AMD's CEO Hector de Ruiz talks about struggling to compete with Intel, but more importantly about their upcoming 64-bit processors. He says that AMD's 64-bit chips will be comparatively priced to the 32-bit ones, and backwards compatible. He also thinks there will be a market for desktop 64-bit systems. Skip to the last page for the most interesting stuff."
Is there really much consumer (not business) application for 64-bit processors? If so, where would desktop computing benefit?
slashdot!=valid HTML
will it be faster than 32 bit offerings? For almost anyone out there, it's the only factor when buying a CPU: speed! Adressing >4Gb of memory is not that worries me first :)
have you been defaced today?
Yes 64 bit CPU's for desktops will soon be the next new thing, but who really needs them? Grandma and grampa checking their email won't need something that fast and even the normal computer user will never experience such CPU intensive work to need a larger word size. Trust me I am not saying I won't be one of the first people to run out and get one, but there really is no need for the general public to have 64 bit processors.
those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. -isaac asimov
Will the processors run cooler than the current 32 bit offerings from AMD?
As much as I love AMD, my box is far too loud, and I'm too damned cheap to shell out another $100 for decently quiet fans.
Both Intel and AMD have been betting big on 64 bit computing and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Itanium 1 was a flop. Itanium 2 has respectable performance, but is not IA-32 backward compatible, where AMD x86-64 is backward compatible.
I will bet that backward compatibility will tilt the balance to Opteron and that Intel will scramble to introduce a new chip Yamhill(?) designed to provide the backward compatibility that IA64 lacks.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Here are some benchmarks for a Operton.
http://www.aceshardware.com/
I love that everyone read that story and thought it ment that they were leaving the desktop market, when it really said that they were going to diversify outside of the desktop market, as in do more in addition to their desktop market...
...")
(a quote from first paragraph of the Forbes article "[a] strategy of developing processors for a wider range of products outside computers
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
At first they will be expensive, then they will be in the $599 desktops. Why wouldn't you use them?
Just wondering, if Linux already runs on 64bit, which I think it does, and I have not heard of microsoft having anything ready for this market, does this mean that just as gamer's buying games pushed the video card (and in my opinion, the os) market, will we see linux be increasing adopted since it will run 64bit and MS does not?
Just a question.
Thanks for the replies
Sigs are dangerous coy things
If you have a 64-bit 2 GHz processor and a 32-bit 2 GHz processor, the 64-bit processor is going to be much faster. This speeds up the whole system, not just the rate at which you make giblets fly.
Ehrmm. no, if it were that easy we would all be using 64bit by now. 64bit has historically been faster because they belong to a better group of architectures called RISC, the new AMD 64-bit will be faster not because they have more bits but because AMD has upgraded the architecture and added more registers.
The number of bits is a meaningless as counting the number of seats in a car, twice as many seats doesnt make a faster car. In fact it makes the car harder to design to be fast, so does 64bit processors.
If you have a 64-bit 2 GHz processor and a 32-bit 2 GHz processor, the 64-bit processor is going to be much faster. This speeds up the whole system, not just the rate at which you make giblets fly.
No. That's a myth. As it stands, Pentiums for many years now have sported 64 bit buses and 64-bit FPUs (well, 80-bit CPUS actually), so we're not talking about bus size and FPU width. We're talking about:
1. All addresses being 64-bits.
2. All internal integer registers being 64-bits.
For #1, realize that this is going to greatly increase the data size of many applications. The larger the data size, the higher the chance of cache misses. In general, this is a loss, not a win.
For #2, realize that some integer operations are O(N) where N is the number of bits involved. 64-bit multiplication and division are slower than the same 32-bit operations. Period.
The gain with 64-bit processors is one of address space and nothing more.
I'm amazed to read the discussion, wether or not 64 bit will succeed over 32 bit processors.
...
This is 10 years after DEC has introduced the Alpha Architecture (in spring 1992).
The Alpha was fun to work with, not only because of it's 64 bit architecture, but because of the clean orthogonal instruction set and it's outstanding performance.
Rest in peace
I think the problem was that no-one actually read the story... just the sensationlist Slashdot article.
All the article said was that AMD saw the ridiculous waste of time in simply jacking up the speed of processes continually... We're up to 3GHz now... and what actually requires that? Not much... so why not spend the time building COOLER chips that can be cooled in a QUIETER way... in fact, why not ship your chips with a QUIET fan, like really QUIET (why am I shouting the word QUIET? Oh yeah, so I can be heard over my AMD with noisy FAN!)...
Cooler... damn that would be nice... my media server, sitting in my entertainment cabinet... pumps out a lot of heat... it's ridiculous really... I got a relatively lowly Duron 1GHz and it's pouring the heat out.
Surely, now that they're up at 3GHz... rather than screaming towards 4GHz like mad things, why don't they work on making the 2GHz and lower cooler?
No real benefit will come until geniune 64-bit apps hit the consumer market. This will be a steep learning curve for most developers who have only ever know 16 or 32-bit programming.
The problems to be hurdled are:
1) Reliance on the fact that size of pointer is equal to size of int.
2) Reliance on a particular byte order in the machine word.
3) Using type long and presuming that it always has the same size as int.
4) Alignment of stack variables.
5) Different alignment rules in structures and classes.
6) Pointer arithmetic.
A lot of engineering (and developer re-education) work also needs to be put into not only these issues, but also designing the application so that it is actually getting the most out of each clock cycle.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
AMD's 64-bit chips will be comparatively priced to the 32-bit ones
So, they're going to be twice as much?
heh.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
No this is the interesting stuff
"eWEEK: What does it mean to you personally, though, when a Gateway or an IBM not just stop, but announce that they'll no longer be offering AMD as an option?
Ruiz: I think it's terrible, obviously. It's terrible. I think if you were to talk with Ted Waitt at Gateway, and ask him, "Why'd you do that?" and if he would really tell you why, it's a question of he's being bribed to do it. Now, he's got to look out for his own hide and the company that's probably in great difficulty has got to listen to the huge amounts of money that can help him do that.
But you know what I find amazing, think about the power, is that despite all that, which obviously we really get emotional about the fact that somebody like Gateway gets bribed into doing that, is that despite that, according to Dataquest last week, we're still holding a 19 percent share of the market. That to me tells me we're in the throes of breaking this open"
Hey Intel, see you in court! Of course now that Intel is along with Microsoft backing a group to outlaw opensource in the government, I think its time for the opensource community to boycott Intel. Why should our money go to a company which is now attempting to hurt Linux and opensource? I know because these recent actions, I will NEVER buy Intel ever again!
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I see many posts here wondering about porting Linux to 64 bit...
Remember the Alpha? 64 bit goodness all the way. Has been running Linux for years.
And for those old enough to remember... Microsoft did support Win NT on the Alpha just a few years ago.
As far as the software goes, both Linux and Microsoft are ready for 64 bit computing.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
2^32 addressing is obsolete already -- it cannot keep up. Most enthusiasts have a gig of RAM (or more) in their DESKTOP PCs. In 2005, most of them will have hit the 4gb limit. In 2009, most consumer PCs will have hit the same limit. Servers have already hit this limit. That's why there are special instructions (a return to segmented memory access) on P3 and P4 processors, allowing up to 64gb of RAM in 4gb segments to be addressed. If you remember doing DOS programming (I do), you know why this 64-bits is good, while 32-bit segmented access isn't.
:)
2^32 addressing limits addressable HD space to 2 terabytes. "2 terabytes? But that's way larger than even enthusiasts use in their PCs, despite their larger than average needs." This ignores the fact that many companies have storage arrays that are at 2 terabytes. Some work went into the 2.5 Linux kernel to increase the number of blocks that could be addressed by moving internally to 64-bits. Storage needs are always increasing. If we're hitting 2tb today, isn't it a good thing that we're moving to a better amount of bits?
2^64 addressing is not the only benefit of the change. FPUs see additional benefit when they have more bits. More bits means more precission; this is very important and desirable, especially when working with numbers that have fractional components. For proper 3D rendering, physics models, and anything else that involves computing numbers that have fractional parts, more is better. When the FPU can handle a double in one clock cycle because it works natively on 64-bit IEEE floating point numbers, you will notice a performance boost in addition to the increased accuracy.
64-bit word operations means that databuses can be slower, since each clock-tick sends more data. 64-bits means you can do more, more flexibly, with your computer.
There will always people who resist change, even when there is no reason to resist change. The same people are posting comments on Slashdot about how 32-bits is enough, and how happy they are with 32-bit applications. These are the same people who had to be carried, kicking and screaming, from their 286s to the new 386 and 486 machines which had 32-bit addressing and data operations. Don't let these people hold back your exploration of new technology!
For those of you who are saying, "what about 64 bits? Will 64 bits be enough?" 2^64 is 32 orders of magnitude bigger than 2^32. 2^32 is roughly 4.5 billion (unsigned). 2^64 unsigned is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, or roughly 2220 * 8309 trillion. 4.5 billion goes into that number 4.5 billion times. 2^64 is certainly enough for at least a hundred years
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Have you ever done a physics engine? When you are working with vectors, you want as much precission as you can get. More precission means more bits.
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This isn't totally correct.
"64bit" refers to the size of the instruction word, not "how much data the processor handles at once". That is a function of pipelining, ALUs, branch prediction, etc. This can be proved by a recompile of a 32bit application with 64bit flags. The application won't be "magically" twice as fast.
There is something else... a 64bit app may even be *slower* as the cache can only hold half the number of words, given an equal cache size. Cache misses are a huge performance hit these days, as RAM is much slower than Cache RAM.
Of course the big difference between AMD and IBM is that the new 64bit PPC970 doesn't take a performance hit switching between 32 and 64bit applications. This has more to do with the PPC ISA than anything in the processor.
The only thing that 64bits will give "normal" users is the ability to address a *huge* amount of LOGICAL memory. In most cases, it doesn't make sense to make 64bit versions of applications, due to the above cache issue. Also, note the allusion that users will require more RAM for 64bit applications, as it will be needed to store the larger word size.
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Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
Increased maximum memory helps.
Opteron's extra registers help.
64-bit calculations are easier, they don't have to be put into multiple 32-bit parts.
So...a 32-person bus is just as good as a 64-person bus? It may be harder to design and build, but when you have to move >32 people it's nice to have that big of a bus running around.
What I'm saying is, being 64-bit DOES make you faster. Not twice as fast, but definately faster and more powerful.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Perhaps, what I'm asking is, can anybody compare and contrast the two architectures; is there a certain advantage to one or the other?
Yah - AMD will offer it to the consumer combined with motherboards from tier-1 manufacturers like Asus, Abit, IWill, Tyan, and so forth, all at an attractive price (read: the same price as the Athalon XP CPUs).
Intel, on the other hand, will keep their 64 bit CPUs out of the consumer hands by pricing them above what most consumers are willing to pay, thus reaping a premium on them by selling them in servers through Dell and IBM (making even more money on cases and motherboards). There will be limited support for the CPU outside Intel's own motherboard offerings, and if you run with a hard-drive, video card, CD-Rom that has not been explicitly approved by Intel, then forget support (we've had this problem with Intel on some of their server motherboards).
Intel is taking the Cathedral approach, and AMD a Bazaar approach.
Talk to the right people and you'll find a beta of win2k server for the alpha cpu. At the time neither intel or AMD had a ready for prime time cpu and MS needed to keep a working 64 bit codebase.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
For #1, realize that this is going to greatly increase the data size of many applications. The larger the data size, the higher the chance of cache misses. In general, this is a loss, not a win.
wouldn't the chance of cache misses depend on the caching policy? How does the data size matter?
Data size matters because a program will typically access a fixed number of working variables, not a fixed amount of data. If a program's working set size stays at, say, 1000 words, and you move from a 32-bit to a 64-bit architecture, you need a cache with twice as much storage space to hold the working set without thrashing.
There's easily enough die area to double the sizes of the L1 and L2 caches; the problem is that it slows down cache access (more latency cycles fetching something from L1 is a Bad Thing).
Certain types of load work with constant size instead of constant word count, but most of those deal with working sets large enough that you'll thrash no matter what.
The gain with 64-bit processors is one of address space and nothing more.
Which includes better behaviour for those programs that have to fake larger address space. That would be a speed increase.
Nothing running on x86 will do that. Unless you're running old DOS programs in real mode, you're already working with a flat address space. Typically 2 gigs of this is available to user programs (with the rest being mapped to kernel or device space). If you have a problem with a working set larger than 2 gigabytes, you already have a Sun/$other_vendor machine to solve it on.
Larger address space targets the _future_ problem of desktop users who want many gigabytes of memory.
A fringe benefit is being able to more efficiently map multi-gigabyte files into memory space, but performance for this kind of task is limited by disk latency and controller bandwidth, not memory architecture.
I think you'll be surprised where 64-bit CPU's may become useful consumers.
The first place where this will be useful is video editing. With the proliferation of MiniDV camcorders that have IEEE-1394 connections to desktop computers, many camcorder users are downloading video onto their computers for editing and creating home-made VideoCD or DVD-R discs. With 64-bit CPU processing we now can see the development much more sophisticated (yet easier to use) programs that make video editing and VideoCD or DVD-R disc creation almost a snap.
The second place this is useful is still image editing. With the proliferation of digital still cameras with USB ports people are doing more and more image processing of still images before printing out the pictures. With 64-bit CPU processing we can see image-editing tools that can do image processing that is far more sophisticated than what even Photoshop 7.0 can do today, yet would be easier to use than ever.
The final place is games. 64-bit processing makes it possible to do extremely sophisticated graphics effects in real time without over-reliance on an expensive high-end graphics card; a lot of games that need fast motion with complex backgrounds could benefit from going to 64-bit CPU processing.
As for as I know, the SISC (single instruction set computing), typically embodied by the instruction SBN (subtract and branch if negative) is only used as a joke, in the same manner as Intercal and Malbolge.
Oh, you probably meant CISC, never mind...
32 bit architectures are not limited to 4 gigabytes of memory. "32 bit processor" refers to the width of the DATA bus (and registers). It does not refer to the width of the address bus.
For example, the z80 and 6502 were 8-bit processors, but they supported more than 256 bytes of RAM (2^8 bytes). The 68000 and 80286 were 16-bit processors, but they supported more than 64k of RAM (2^16 bytes). That's because the 8-bit processors had 16-bit address busses, and the 16-bit processors often had 24-bit address busses.
The current pentium-4 Xeon chip supports 64 gig of RAM, despite being a 32-bit processor.
64-bit computing means that you can hold a 64-bit quantity (long int or double) in a register. Also, you can load, store, or perform arithmetic on such quantities using one instruction and often in one clock cycle.
This offers very few benefits for the end consumer. Mostly it's about perception: consumers will percieve that a 64-bit chip is twice as good as a 32-bit one.
That's not exactly accurate. A 64 bit processor has a large data pathway, and is more comparable to a roadway than a car. The cars are the data, and a 64-bit roadway has twice the space for cars (data) on it, which is where the extra speed is. But I do agree with you otherwise.
I think you mean CISC.
...
...and not have any other way to solve the problem
RISC = Reduced Instruction Set Computer
CISC = Complex
The basic idea of (most) RISC chip designs, such as the MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC & Sparc, was to have a large number of general purpose registers, fixed length instructions that could only refer to those registers, and only a handful of instructions that specifically read/wrote to main memory (which is why they're also referred to as 'load/store' architectures). This simplistic design allowed them to push clock speeds without too much trouble. RISC processors were also adopted superscalar designs (having multiple execution units, allowing the execution of multiple instructions 'simultaniously') before their CISC counterparts.
In contrast to the simplicity of the RISC systems, there are the CISC chips, such as the x86 and the old VAX processors, which tried to make their instructions resemble high-level languages, as well as having a smaller number of registers, many of them having a special purpose. With variable length instructions, and many different modes of operation for each instruction, the CISC methodology generaly resulted in much larger, more complex chip designs that were harder to speed up, pipeline & make superscalar.
To compare the two, lets take a simple operation, such as taking two numbers from memory & adding them together. A generic RISC system would do something like:
1) load 1st number into Register 1
2) load 2nd number into Register 2
3) add the value in R1 to R2, putting the value in R3
4) copy the value from Register 3 to memory
where a CISC chip, would more likely do something more like:
1)add the value at memory location 1 to the value at memory location 2, and store in a special Accumulator register
2) copy the Accumulator register back to memory
The difference being that where the RISC machine only had one addition operation (register+register->register), the CISC machine would have a handful of them, depending on where the data came from (memory (using multiple forms of reference), registers, constants, and various combinations).
In the early 80s, the RISC/CISC debate was a hot one in accademia, and RISC won out there, by virtue of its simplicity & easy of improvement. By the mid 80s, the debate was starting again in industry, as a number of RISC chips started entering the marketplace, where Intel's x86 architecture won by virtue of the IBM PC.
The whole debate is pretty much a moot point now,
since Intel's new x86 chips have RISC cores wrapped by a thin layer to translate the complex instructions. As an added bonus, the new 64b x86 systems should be adding a bunch of extra registers, further negating the penalty of the architecture.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
The new Thoroughbred Revision B Athlons (XP 2400+ and higher) made a significant drop in power consumption (1.65V core), while the 3GHz P4 guzzles more electrons than any Athlon (have you seen the heatsink Intel bundles with that thing?!). The Hammer series uses Silicon-On-Insulator technology to keep power consumption (heat) down, to the point that the larger Hammer core consumes about the same amount of power as the TBred RevB. AMD is gunning for the high-density rackmount market with the Opteron where efficient power use is critical. They'll get it too.
I have a dual CPU Athlon 2400+ box, 2GHz each, using Thermalright SLK800 heatsinks and 80mm adjustable fans set to 2500RPM. My temps are 41C/43C/42C (case/CPU1/CPU2) at the moment with about 25% CPU utilization. Power consumption (as measured by my UPS load monitor) is the same as the dual Athlon 1800+ chips (1.53GHz) the new CPUs replaced.
- 1. All addresses being 64-bits.
This is incorrect. The Hammer "long mode" uses 32 bits as the default data size. 64 bits are only used for pointers and explicitely overridden 64 bit operands. I.e., you still have to declare "long long" or "int64" or whatever, in your languages to access those 64 bits. All your old 32-bit data still occupies the same space.For #1, realize that this is going to greatly increase the data size of many applications. The larger the data size, the higher the chance of cache misses. In general, this is a loss, not a win.
Furthermore, measurements by AMD indicate that op-code size did not increase with the expanded instructions, but actual *decreased* because the additional registers decreased the typical amount of spill/fill code emitted.
Therefore there is no additional cache pressure. The "code bloat" problem remains solely in the hands of the software developer, and is *NOT* worsened in any way by hammer.
- 2. All internal integer registers being 64-bits.
This is also incorrect. There are numerous well known techniques used in ALU design that makes precious few operations "O(bits)". Again, AMD specifically targetted this. For example: the 64-bit integer multiply in hammer is *FASTER* (per clock) than the 32-bit integer multiply in either the Athlon or Pentium 4.For #2, realize that some integer operations are O(N) where N is the number of bits involved. 64-bit multiplication and division are slowerthan the same 32-bit operations. Period.
The reason AMD is able to do this is because arithmetic and logic operations can largely be implemented in a "more gates for more speed" fashion. They are closer to O(ln(N)) than O(N). But at this level of circuit design, you don't necessarily think in those terms (since N is constant, everything just looks like O(1)) -- these high speed circuit designers worry about other technical things like "latch speed".
The 64 bit integer divide may be a little slower, however, again you need to explicitely use 64 bit ints in your software, and division is a comparatively uncommon operation.
- The gain with 64-bit processors is one of address space and nothing more.
This is the largest gain (big DB people will be very happy with it) but it certainly is not the only gain. Remember that there are now twice as many SSE registers. This opens up some performance possibilities for multimedia applications.Although I don't know that its related to SSE, it should be pointed out that EPIC (as in the video game company) has ported the Unreal engine to x86-64! Like most people, I was quite surprised that they did this, however, they apparently found doing it to be worthwhile.
Do not underestimate the upside of going to 64 bits in the way that AMD has done it. They have literally made it a no-lose scenario -- that alone should spur (mostly new) application developer interest.
If you find you need that sort of mega addressing the chances are the app you need already runs on 64 bit Solaris. After that point it's up to the vendor (Think Avanti Corp /Apollo) Wheither it's worth their while.
Remember, You need their application. Unless your app is home
grown or you have some signifigant pull with a vendor the port isn't
going to happen.
The desktop is an afterthought. This chip was designed to be sold in quanties of 8 and higher in single large servers. Once they cut into that market the economies of scale just happen to make it cheap enough for the desktop market to pick it up. They have a much better chance at getting it down with their builtin backwards compatibility and keeping costs down. Alpha never hit that "sweet spot" for the volume to really bring down the price..
Now, Don't think Intel is going to sit on its hands while AMD eats their lunch. They're more likely to drop an Itanium instruction decoder into an Alpha EV7 core and push that than follow with an x86-64 processor line. Itanium is just to big and costs too much to at this stage of development to make inroads fast enough stop AMD in gaining marketshare but more importantly, mindshare. Intel would never take up x86-64, Doing so admits defeat to the industry i.e. You're not the leader anymore.
So to sum it up, Intel will either:
2 and 3 are much more likely than one, You know which one I'd rather see happen :).
Either way it'll be a boon for the OS community and certainly make our (The Alpha community) lives easier. The way I see it, even if hammer is moderatly successfull. You guys will 'clean' most of the popular soucecode out there to be 64 bit clean, reducing our matainence work by like 80%. The only thing we'll have to worry about is firmware, toolchain, libc, Xwindows, and kernel. So please buy a *hammer and learn the joys of porting to 64 bits. If it proves too painfull, please see the ld manpage for the "-taso" flag :).
Peter
www.alphalinux.org
Unless he has proof, that would be libel, no? Of course not - in his world, when a competitor gets more business by offering a substantial discount that you cant match - thats bribery. When you do it, that's good business.
Maybe, maybe not. When Standard Oil undercut all its competitors by pricing its products BELOW production costs in order to drive them to bankruptcy and buy them out, that was ruled A Bad Thing and led to SO being broken up. There is a point where offering "special deals" is considered anti-competitive. If Standard Oil got nailed simply for offering product for too low a price, it's not unreasonable that Intel should likewise be nailed for offering product for a super low price, but only to companies that don't buy from Intel competitors. That's kind of shady territory there.
For example: BobComp buys Intel and AMD CPUs, so they get P4s for $35 each. JoeComp buys only Intel so they get the "deal" of $30 each. If BobComp buys 1000 CPUs a year from Intel and JoeComp buys only 500, then it's clearly not a "bulk discount".; it's a "helping us ace out the competition" discount. Now if $30 represents a significant loss of profit margin over $35 for Intel, then I'd say Intel is edging into some pretty anti-competitive territory.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Spare me the smoke and vapor. Don't you remember the sad story of Mica, errr, NT on Alpha? Loudly proclaimed, quietly killed, that's why I think they are not there. If you consider the number of bugs and holes in 32bit M$ work, you might conclude they never arived anywhere.
In the mean time, you can get Linux and BSD on Alpha and other 64 bit platoforms:
Oh, it hurts so much to remember and think!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The flaw in your logic is that Intel's actually making a profit, while AMD is still, I believe, in the red. Seeing as how it tends to be difficult to turn a profit when your primary product is sold at a loss, I'll take a stab in the dark and guess that they're not actually selling any chips for below the production cost.
Also, don't forget that Intel's manafacturing technology is about three years ahead of AMD. Their production costs are half of AMD's per unit.
A big problem with AMD chips, and something that I suspect is a not insignificant factor when it comes to the big OEMs, is that AMD builds fragile chips! If I need to build and ship x thousands of computers per day, if half the chips I buy get cracked during installation, I'm effectively paying double the unit cost.
If only this were the case, the itanium 2 is very different to the alpha.
Really they should have continued the alpha, instead of creating a new architecture... The alpha is the cleanest of all the 64bit architectures, and has always been the most performant, plus by using an existing architecture you would already have a software and user base.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Let's say I have a 16,000 by 16,000 image frame. I have 60 of them per second, and have 2 hours of film. That works out to 100.5 terabytes of data. 2^64 happens to let me store and address about 166,937 of these superduperHD movies.
Now, I don't know about you, but I only own a couple-hundred movies, and I only own a couple-hundred games. Even if they were the mega, mega high res I mention above, I'd still not use up more than a miniscule fraction of what I had available. That's why I think it'll last at least a century.
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