Re: 64 bits

From:
Knute Johnson <nospam@rabbitbrush.frazmtn.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Mon, 26 May 2008 14:36:56 -0700
Message-ID:
<483b2d78$0$4077$b9f67a60@news.newsdemon.com>
Arne Vajh??j wrote:

Knute Johnson wrote:

Kenneth P. Turvey wrote:

I was looking around for requests for enhancement related to the use
of large arrays and Collections, but I can't seem to find this stuff
anywhere. The only related bug reports I see are:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4880587
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6460346
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6292967

All closed, and this one:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4853782
which says it won't be fixed. Has sun decided we will never need more
than 2GB?


No, they've decided that you will probably never need a collection
with more than 2 billion objects in it. Same situation with arrays.
I can't imagine this ever being a problem for most programmers.


I agree with you for today. With the exceptions of a few Java SE
apps running on big servers.

But in 10 years when a PC comes with 256 or 512 GB of RAM, then
an array with >2 billion elements will not be unusual - same for
collections.

Arne


I'm not as sure as you that we are going to have such big memories. The
pace of processor speed and memory size has slowed considerably in the
last couple of years. Disk drives on the other hand continue to get
bigger daily, and they get faster.

A collection with 2 billion elements would be very slow indeed, even on
a very fast computer. How long would a sort take on 500 billion or a
trillion elements? Years? If you could use a long as the index there
could be 9 quintillion elements. That's a lot!

--

Knute Johnson
email s/knute/nospam/

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