Linked by Jeremy T. Fox on Fri 11th Jul 2003 16:55 UTC
A recent article by Tony Smith from The Register titled "Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will not be a 64-bit OS" caused a good deal of confusion with many people, including me. It is also caused a heated argument here on OSNews. The basic point of the article is that Mac OS 10.2.7 and 10.3 are not "true" 64-bit OSes, but the article does not clearly explain what a "true" 64-bit OS is. This had led to a lot of claims that the article is false or misinformed, rather than just unclear, which is certainly is.
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>Gee, in the 1970's I was told a word length is the OS's
>natural language size. A 64 bit word length OS is the only
>measure of what would run on a 64 bit computer is it not?
>In other words, can the OS understand a single 64 bit
>command? Not a hacked or doubled command. The instruction
>set of the processor must be 64 bit even it only the
>ability to use the total command is there.
Nope, the bit-ness of an OS is the size of the memory pointers it uses, your getting confused with the bit-ness of the CPU itself.
Example, AgigaOS was a 32-bit OS running (initially) on 16-bit hardware (which in fact also only had a 24-bit address bus, so some badly coded apps were actually only 24-bit..). The C64 had a 16-bit 'OS' running on 8-bit hardware.