Warp wrote:
> Chris Cason <new### [at] deletethispovrayorg> wrote:
>>Plus 64-bit mode also allows you to render insane scenes ;-). (I've rendered
>>one here which used 3.5 gigabytes of RAM).
>   Theoretically a 32-bit version could also do that, but it's very
> possible that some OSs limit the maximum allocatable size to 2 GB.

Makes me wonder how they raytraced insane scenes in days of yore...
different computing paradigm, I suppose?  '80s Cray vs. 2004 AMD/Intel
is more apples 'n' oranges than '80s Intel vs. 2004 AMD/Intel; the
'80s Cray is still 'more powerful' than today's consumer machines I
guess.

>   But I suppose that with a 64-bit binary the theoretical limits are
> so immensely high that we don't need to worry about them in the next
> several decades (hardware other than the CPU is and will be the limiting
> factor for long time). Thus allocating 3.5 or 35 or even 350 gigabytes
> of memory is not any problem in a 64-bit system (as long as the hardware
> is up to those sizes)... :)

Yeah, where's my 100 gb sticks of RAM?  :P

-- 
Tim Cook
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-empyrean

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