The big leap

摘要

The Beatles could have been singing an anthem for the computer industry when they asked, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" Little did they know that 64 would eventually mark a milestone in the maturity of microprocessor technology: It's the quantity of bits available for programming a new generation of chips that have recently gone into mass production. It amounts to a quantum jump ahead of the 32-bit variety that has been constraining system capacity for more than a decade.