The 64-bit computer. Is there no end to this?

[Larry G. Alexander]

The 64-bit computer is now with us. Will we soon be offered a 128-bit system? 256-bit? 512? Gigabit?

Is there no end to the upward spiral and what are the advantages of increasing the number of bits besides the fact that you can address huge, ever-increasing amounts of RAM?

Regards,

Larry A.

[Styxx]

I pass ...

[squoze]

Its enough to make your head spin, isn't it?
They've been working on 64 bit for a while--I don't think you will see 128 or 256 soon.
I hope there is no end to the upward spiral of improvement, as long as prices stay where they are. Computing efficiency is one of the rare areas where your money continues to buy more and more power.
Could you imagine a world where the quality of music increased by a factor of 10 every few each years? Would we yearn for the days of old? Give me that good old Gregorian chant?
Well, somehow, engineers are able to keep improving, while keeping prices low. I say thank you. As Marilyn vos Savant said "But the occupational group most responsible for modern society is engineers, who should win a “most underappreciated” award."
They are building what the computing community is demanding. Don't buy it if its not needed. I think we'll see support for 32-bit remain for quite a while.

[loogoo]

Well, in the event of massive power outages you could at least still have good old Gregorian chant! ;)

But I agree, even with modest systems now we are able to do things that would have seemed miraculous when I was still in school (won't say how long ago that was).

[squoze]

Well, in the event of massive power outages you could at least still have good old Gregorian chant! ;)
Yes, we are increasingly dependent on technology, aren't we? That's kinda scary.

[Larry G. Alexander]

When I started in computin', back in the Dark Ages (Radio Shack TRS-80), 48k of RAM was the ultimate, hard drives hadn't been invented yet and my 'puter ran at a blazing two megaHertz! The monitor was no thing of beauty either and I loaded programs from a cassette machine before floppy disks became common. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

We've come a long way, Baby! http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

Regards,

LGA

[southportJim]

When I started in computin', back in the Dark Ages (Radio Shack TRS-80), 48k of RAM was the ultimate, hard drives hadn't been invented yet and my 'puter ran at a blazing two megaHertz!
LGA

WOW LARRY! You had a Trash-80?

I was on a VIC-20 and had to pay an extra $100 for a 5kb memory expansion, but it sure was a lot of fun!
;-)

[Larry G. Alexander]

WOW LARRY! You had a Trash-80?

I was on a VIC-20 and had to pay an extra $100 for a 5kb memory expansion, but it sure was a lot of fun!
;-)
A hundred bucks today will buy about a GIGABYTE of RAM!

I started on a Radio Shack TRS-80 model one computer (?) that would spontaneously reboot each time I blinked. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif I then graduated to a Radiator Shaft model three that consisted of the monitor and keyboard being molded into one single, big piece of plastic. It didn't reboot itself but it was as ugly as a country dirt road after a heavy rain! http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

Regards,

LGA

[loogoo]

Does anyone remember the Timex Sinclair? Came out in the early 80's - my first computer. It took 15 minutes to load up "Pong" from the cassette recorder and boy, did I think it was great!

[robh]

Our high school had Commodore PET computers with 16k RAM!
Space Invaders was a big hit!

Rob

[cptexas]

Even in my very short lifetime I've seen computers speed up and grow so much. I still remember my computer back when I was 7. It ran Win95 and I remember sequencing MIDI from the sound card's synth. It sounded absolutely terrible but it worked! Actually, the string sections sounded fantastic on that card. It was a lot better than the new cards' string sections.

Anyway, the point is is that even in my 13 years that I can remember (I only remember to back when I was 2) I've seen technology change so much and I can't imagine what y'all who have been around *cough* a bit longer have seen in terms of technology development.

-Chris

[Christopher Duncan]

y'all who have been around *cough* a bit longer
Laugh it up, pup. Getting old is the point! :D

[cptexas]

Laugh it up, pup. Getting old is the point! :D
Yeah, I know. I've just been feelin' a bit old lately. Being a sophmore in HS?! It's like it was the first day of kindergarden yesterday! OK, maybe last week... I never imagined I'd live to be (what I called teenagers back then) a "big scary high schooler person." :eek: Then I look in the miror and there he is. Chris Prestia at age 15! :cool:

-Chris

[Christopher Duncan]

Then I look in the miror and there he is. Chris Prestia at age 15! :cool:
And it just keeps getting better!

In America, society tells us that we're getting old at 30 and are over the hill at 40. At 50, you're officialy Old And In The Way i.e., you'd do us all a favor if you'd just quietly die off so we don't have to bother with you. Because of this, most people spend a lot of time when they're young dreading getting old, since obviously life sucks after your 20s, right?

Fortunately for those of us who want to live beyond 29 years of age, that's all nonsense. My 20s were great fun. In my 30s, I was smarter, stronger, and had more experience, so I was in an even better place. In my 40s, I've accomplished even more in yet another set of career goals. And now, pushing 50 (I'm 48), I can see the exhilaration of being one of the Old Dogs - I've learned the ropes, have the confidence to take on any new challenge, and enough road behind me to help other people (so they don't have to make the same stupid mistakes I made).

I've never quite figured out why everyone in our culture is so terrified of getting older. Trust me, man. It rocks! :)

[dewdman42]

64bit actually does buy quite a bit over 32bit. Not as much improvement as 32bit did for 16bit. But still a substantial improvement. It may indeed be a very long time before we need 128bit computers (other than perhaps for gaming). 64bit systems are addressing many concerns that take us up to silly max numbers. For example, the max amount of addressable memory under 64bit will be silly high. But there are other advantages of 64bit, like the fact that CPU's will be able to move wider data across the various data busses, which means faster throughput of essential data. Larger integers are more easily handled without special processing, etc..

The need to address more memory and handle large numbers is probably the biggest reason that the computer industry in general needs 64bit. Compilers are being optimized and many things actually do run faster under 64bit than under 32bit when properly optimized. This has largely to do with the fact that the CPU can handle bigger numbers natively and also that it can move more data in/out of the CPU with each CPU cycle...which makes it more efficient. However efficiency can be accomplished many other ways besides changing the entire operating system to more bits. The real need of the industry has been the need to more natively support very large numbers.

But the new max values are now so seriously high in the stratosphere with 64bit, it will probably be years before the industry as a whole really needs 128bit CPU's (from that perspective alone). Perhaps not enough of a need to cause momentum in that direction.

Consider also that Windows 95 came out in 1995, 10 years ago...which was one of the big leaps from 16bit->32bit. Now 10 years later we're moving to 64bit. I personally think it will be AT LEAST 10 more years before we see 128bit systems even interesting at all and perhaps much longer since the need I mentioned above for bigger numbers and bigger memory is essentially eliminated for all practical purposes.

Now all that being said, there is still some advantage to having wider data busses for things like Audio, Video, gaming, etc.. moving more data around from component to component inside the computer can be made faster by making it wider. but I suspect they will address most of those concerns without actually having to make CPU's 128bit. But we'll see 128bit soundcards, 128bit vid cards, etc. and even higher perhaps... Perhaps even hybrid CPU's that can move wider data in/out of the CPU, but the OS really will not have many practical reasons for needing to be higher than 64bit.

I think we'll see those within 5 years actually. But personally...my gut tells me we won't have to worry about 128bit CPU's and OS's for quite a long time... By the way, if I were you, I'd still wait at least another year before running out and jumping on the 64bit bandwagon. There are still a lot of problems to be solved. Maybe when Longhorn comes out, which is still YEARS away from now..then it will be time to go 64bit. Anyone running 64bit windows at this point in time is using bleeding edge technology.

Hey, isn't this group supposed to be music related? :-P

[chmara]

My first e music was made with a theremin kit I bough mail order from Bob Moog who was in the next county over when I was a kid.

I started engineering and editing sound on Ampex reel to reel tape machines and was amazed how easy it was to create "echo" by moving heads around for an effect. Previously we had used metal trash cans and bathrooms walled with tile to get echo.

Less Paul was developing the whole multi-voiced looping thing. All was linear cut n splice 1/4 tape.

Yearls later, my first computer was a Portable Wonder (if you were a gorilla) running on CPM and made by Osborne. I lived with the travesty of DOS 1 on my IBM then switched to Mac months after it came out and have never looked back.

I guess 64 has been a magic number ever since that MS guy said there would never be a need for more than 64K of ram. The math of slicing the continuum of sound using 64 bits refines the working of sound much in the way that the motion picture industry was advanced from 16 FPS to 24 FPS with the advent of sound tracks. Flicker and glitch to the eye dissapeared, and it to has been revised by TV, HDTV -- and goodness knows what to come.

This means that dither technologies will be more lossless. 64 bits means true portomento soundsfrom samples that are truly not a continuous line when graphed -- but are now completely such to the human ear as is viewing atrking a match at 24 FPS is to the human eye.

And I hope, for humankinds sake (not just musicians) the technological development continue to accelerate even more geometrically than they have.

Think of it this way -- a full Wagnerian orchestra - each instrument miked into its own line that feeds each into its own channel of a mega computer for mixing. Or having a computer facile enough to do the same thing with samples? 256 -- here we come!!!!

[Larry G. Alexander]

Thanks, y'all, for some great information. I appreciate it!

Best regards to all,

Larry A.

[BlueMax]

Considering you can get the AMD Sempron 64-bit for a lousy $50US and a motherboard for the same, you sure can get a lot of computer on the cheap!

[rwayland]

When I started in computin', back in the Dark Ages (Radio Shack TRS-80), 48k of RAM was the ultimate, hard drives hadn't been invented yet and my 'puter ran at a blazing two megaHertz! The monitor was no thing of beauty either and I loaded programs from a cassette machine before floppy disks became common. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

We've come a long way, Baby! http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

Regards,

LGA

Well, I remember the Trash 80, and the stringy floppy. I remember that there were hard drives before I met the TRS 80, but they were not available for home computers. In those days, they were often called Winchester drives. I did my first programming for a TRS-80, but I did it on my computer, which was a Commodore 64! That datasette tape drive was impossibly slow!

I will never forget my first hands on experience with a computer, which I walked through, at CBS, in New York. It was like walking through a telephone exchange, and it had not near the power of the machine I am using to send this reply.

Richard

[rwayland]

Well, I just passed the 45th anniversary of my 29th birthday, and to me, Chris Duncan is still just barely past juvenile! As for Chris P, well, ?? not exactly old, but certainly one of the most mature 15 year olds I have encountered.

As for "it rocks" I am not so sure; some things get better, some thing don't. Its a bit hard for me to pick up anything from the floor -- I can reach down easily enough, but somethimes I think I need a derrick to get me back up. But that is only some times. I have plenty of time to play the piano, lots of time to write music and time to read. Time to walk the dog, sleep when I want, etc. Main point, you will degenerate physically, but decent exercise is immensely helpful. You will degenerate mentally if you allow it. Good mental exercise is just as important as good physical exercise. Of course, it helps a lot if you have carefully chosen your ancestors.

Richard

[thesoundsmith]

First computer: Kim 1. $189. 1K RAM, hex pad entry. The only manuals were the 6502 machine code manualthe manual for the peripheral interface (PIO) chip, and the actual instruction manual for the Kim, which basically said only enough to get the machine powered up..

Second computer - the Z80 board from zilog, also 1M, processor, 1K RAM. I could write shorter and faster code on the Kim, so I next got the:

OSI Superboard! Now there was a computer! Another 6502, 8K RAM and 8K Microsoft Basic with an included Goldstar 11" B/W Monitor/TV (which worked long after the computer and the monitor case were trash.) My son (at age 37 and a mechanical engineer) still raves about the Tank vs. Blimp game I wrote using the character graphics. :o

But then the Apple II - despite its quirks, that was a serious computer. I wrote my first assembler-coded sequencer, which oddly enough, I called, 'Performer.' (Definitely no relation...) And then I added the Mountain Hardware music system, that I used to create an additive synth with data from the Computer Music Journal and a three-octave scanning keyboard from a mini-Buchla . The first instrument I loaded was a flute, and when I played that first note, and the 'fwaow' of the breath over the tonehole came out of the speakers, I was hooked. Analog synths held no more mystery for me, but this was HOT!

I worked out the basics of a control interface using a hex pad. 4x4: Top row primary action: Load, Store, Edit, Play.
Second Row: for Play - pick an instrument class -string, brass, reed, keyboard, Third Row: for Brass - trumpet, fluegelhorn, bone, bass bone
Last row, real time articulations, by pointing to different attack segments. That's what you would use for live performance, like keyswitching...

What fun! :D Those were the days when a K was a K, by God...

[Larry G. Alexander]

Yes, it was the time when programmers could write pretty decent software that wouldn't use a lot of your computer's memory, unlike some of the bloated, multi-megabyte programs of today (including operating systems). They could cram a lot of stuff into a few kilobytes.

Ah...memories. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

LGA

[southportJim]

First computer: Kim 1. $189. 1K RAM, hex pad entry. The only manuals were the 6502 machine code manualthe manual for the peripheral interface (PIO) chip, and the actual instruction manual for the Kim, which basically said only enough to get the machine powered up..



Yes!!!....6502 machine code! I learned it on a Vic-20 with a simple assembler in BASIC. The actual "study time", however, took place in the Japanese Garden at Zilker Park in Austin, while skipping a morning Finance class at UT. What great memories!

Later I "moved up" to an Atari 400 (the Atari 800 with a "real keyboard was beyond my means)...the Atari had a "real macro assembler" on a plug-in cartridge. Boy, that was hot stuff!

Unfortunately, the only audio work I did was to provide simple backround music to a Hangman game I wrote in assembler...instead I concentrated on learning database design and business programming. Not exactly a waste, but not near as much fun!

;-)

[BlueMax]

I started with the Texas Instruments TI99 4/a, which got me started writing 3-tone music. :)

[Styxx]

Let me at it Larry ... I'll end it for good! :D

[Larry G. Alexander]

My first experience with "synthesized" music was with an outboard soundcard called the Orchestra 85. It worked with Radio Shack computers and allowed you to sequence five simultaneous voices. I wrote a lot of original music for it and the Radio Shack honchos asked me to go to their national headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas to demonstrate it to a large gathering of people during a big music fest. Radio Shack was the distributor for the soundcard.

Holy Toledo! That was twenty years ago! (I was a mere child then.) http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

LGA

[Larry G. Alexander]

Let me at it Larry ... I'll end it for good! http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Nooooooo, Mikey. Don't take away our toys for grownups! If we couldn't do computer music" we'd have to start reading books and carrying on intelligent conversations with people and going to the library and things like that again.
http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon9.gif http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

LGA

[Jimi]

I was on a VIC-20 and had to pay an extra $100 for a 5kb memory expansion, but it sure was a lot of fun!
;-)

The sad part is that the tunes I did on my C-64 were in many ways better than what I do now with far more resources. ;-)

Something about the limitations of old cheesball tracker programs brings out the juice.

[squoze]

First computer: Kim 1. $189.
Hey, that was my first computer also!! I still have mine, but not the power supply.

[RichR]

My first computer was a Sinclair before Timex bought out the British firm (or at least the computer, not sure which it was now ). I had to solder all the connections and put it together. I had a whopping 2K of memory and loaded all the software from a Radio Shack cassette tape player. Things have certainly changed.

RichR

[chmara]

With all us older system guys around -- coming up with scripts in K-2 for classical work should be a snap. no?

Just think auto doubling and intertwining harmony reduced to code other than the musical staff as we know it----

I have just been messing around with basic "ethnic" sounds and old instruments in Izotope processing programs (Spectron.) I was able to get some very disparate packaged sounds to blend harmoniously without a lot of work. They still had the "ear natural" quality of reality.

But, Spectron IS a 64 bit program and does eat up CPU and RAM for that much tweak control. Then--the drive crashed (mechanical) so back to matching sounds --- but now project by project only. Just think how much faster it would go with a machine that would handle 64 bit as the baseline!

[TomcatII]

Hah! My first machine was also the TI 99/4A and I HATED IT!!!!!! At least I managed to sell it before I took it out to the backyard and poured lighter fluid all over it and stuck a match to it, which is what I REALLY wanted to do with it.

Got almost what I had paid for it and then went and got a Commodore 64 which I grew very fond of...and then a C128....and then an Amiga 500 which I really LOVED and which could do things that even today's machines don't...and then, finally, in '95, an IBM Aptiva but only because Win95 with long file names capability came out. I "wasn't gonna do no damn DOS" with it's 8.3 file name limitation plus I HATE CLI's!!!!!! :|:

Tom

[Ivan P]

Hah! .and then an Amiga 500 which I really LOVED and which could do things that even today's machines don't...Tom

You had an Amiga GRRR :)

But I had an Atari St, which was very good too!! LOL

It's a pity I wasn't doing music yet, people still are using it

[BlueMax]

My first experience with "synthesized" music was with an outboard soundcard called the Orchestra 85. It worked with Radio Shack computers and allowed you to sequence five simultaneous voices. I wrote a lot of original music for it and the Radio Shack honchos asked me to go to their national headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas to demonstrate it to a large gathering of people during a big music fest. Radio Shack was the distributor for the soundcard.

Holy Toledo! That was twenty years ago! (I was a mere child then.) http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

LGA
How cool is that? :D I was responsible for Radio Shack carrying the AdLib sound card... I demoed it in their shop dozens of times and I was only 12 at the time. Got mine for a discount because of it. Hey... it was a $400 package at the time! :D

[Larry G. Alexander]

How cool is that? :D I was responsible for Radio Shack carrying the AdLib sound card... I demoed it in their shop dozens of times and I was only 12 at the time. Got mine for a discount because of it. Hey... it was a $400 package at the time! :D
You started early in life. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

I was joking about being a "mere child" twenty years ago. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

LGA

[BlueMax]

You started early in life. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

You bet! I wrote 3-voice music on the TI99 4/a and again on my Tandy 1000SX (anyone else remember Will Harvey's Music Construction Set?) :)

I think my adventures in real music playing and arranging began from about the age of ten, but it would be another 6-8 years before I started composing truly original music.

And I'm ashamed to say, I've let it slide over the last 5 years.... I have some warming up and catching up to do.

One more reason for me to sell the Dell and grab a Mac. NO MORE TIME WASTED PLAYING GAMES!! (I think I'm an addict... 20 years of computer games are a very hard habit to break. :()