• Cethin@lemmy.zip
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    5 months ago

    Yeah, 64 bit handles almost all use cases we have. Sometimes we want double the precision (a double) or length (a long), but we can do that without being 128-bit. It’s harder to do half. Sure, it’d be slightly faster for some things, but it’s not significant.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        5 months ago

        And we have wide instructions that can process this data, such as for multimedia applications.

        Addressing and memory size has been the historic motivator for wider registers, but it’s probably not going to be in my lifetime that I see the need for 128.