There are currently no mainstream general-purpose processors built to operate on 128-bit integers or addresses, though a number of processors do operate on 128-bit data.
System/370The IBM System/370 was a model range of IBM mainframes announced on June 30, 1970 as the successors to the System/360 family. The series maintained backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path for customers; this, plus improved performance, were the dominant themes of the...
, made by
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
, could be considered the first rudimentary 128-bit computer as it used 128-bit floating point registers. Most modern CPUs feature
SIMDIn computing, SIMD is a technique employed to achieve data level parallelism.- History :...
instruction sets (
SSEIn computing, Streaming SIMD Extensions is a SIMD instruction set extension to the x86 architecture, designed by Intel and introduced in 1999 in their Pentium III series processors as a reply to AMD's 3DNow!...
,
AltiVecAltiVec is a floating point and integer SIMD instruction set designed and owned by Apple, IBM and Freescale Semiconductor, formerly the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola, , and implemented on versions of the PowerPC including Motorola's G4, IBM's G5 and POWER6 processors, and P.A. Semi's...
ect.) where 128-bit vector registers are used to store several smaller numbers, such as four 32-bit floating-point numbers, and a single instruction can operate on all these values in parallel.
Discussion
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There are currently no mainstream general-purpose processors built to operate on 128-bit integers or addresses, though a number of processors do operate on 128-bit data.
System/370The IBM System/370 was a model range of IBM mainframes announced on June 30, 1970 as the successors to the System/360 family. The series maintained backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path for customers; this, plus improved performance, were the dominant themes of the...
, made by
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
, could be considered the first rudimentary 128-bit computer as it used 128-bit floating point registers. Most modern CPUs feature
SIMDIn computing, SIMD is a technique employed to achieve data level parallelism.- History :...
instruction sets (
SSEIn computing, Streaming SIMD Extensions is a SIMD instruction set extension to the x86 architecture, designed by Intel and introduced in 1999 in their Pentium III series processors as a reply to AMD's 3DNow!...
,
AltiVecAltiVec is a floating point and integer SIMD instruction set designed and owned by Apple, IBM and Freescale Semiconductor, formerly the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola, , and implemented on versions of the PowerPC including Motorola's G4, IBM's G5 and POWER6 processors, and P.A. Semi's...
ect.) where 128-bit vector registers are used to store several smaller numbers, such as four 32-bit floating-point numbers, and a single instruction can operate on all these values in parallel. These are 128-bit processors in the sense that they have 128-bit
registersIn computer architecture, a processor register is a small amount of storage available on the CPU whose contents can be accessed more quickly than storage available elsewhere. Most, but not all, modern computers adopt the so-called load-store architecture...
, but they do not operate on individual numbers that are 128 binary digits in length.
Uses
- 128 bits is a common key size
In cryptography, key size or key length is the size of the key used in a cryptographic algorithm . An algorithm's key length is distinct from its cryptographic security, which is a logarithmic measure of the fastest known computational attack on the algorithm, also measured in bits...
for symmetric ciphers in cryptographyCryptography is the practice and study of hiding information. Modern cryptography intersects the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and engineering...
. It is also the size of Globally Unique IdentifierA globally unique identifier or GUID is a special type of identifier used in software applications to provide a reference number which is unique in any context , for example, in defining the internal reference for a type of access point in a software application, or for creating unique keys in a...
and IPv6 address.
- 128-bit processors could become prevalent when 16 exbibyte
The exbibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage...
s of addressable memory is no longer enough (128-bit processors would allow memory addressing for 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 bytes (~340.3 undecillion bytes or 281,474,976,710,656 yobibyteThe yobibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage...
s ). However, physical limits make such large amounts of memory currently impossible, given that amount greatly exceeds the total data stored on Earth.
- Quadruple precision (128-bit) floating point
In computing, floating point describes a system for numerical representation in which a string of digits represents a rational number....
number can store qword (64-bit) fixed pointIn computing, a fixed-point number representation is a real data type for a number that has a fixed number of digits after the radix point...
number or integerIn computer science, the term integer is used to refer to a data type which represents some finite subset of the mathematical integers. These are also known as integral data types.- Value and representation :...
accurately without losing precisionIn the fields of engineering, industry and statistics, the accuracy of a measurement system is the degree of closeness of measurements of a quantity to its actual value. The precision of a measurement system, also called reproducibility or repeatability, is the degree to which repeated...
. Notice that since the 8087 (1980), x86 architecture supports 80bits float-points that store and process accurately 64bits integers
- Many graphics cards have a 128-bit or 256-bit data bus to memory.
- Sony
is a multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, and one of the world's largest media conglomerates with revenue exceeding ¥ 7.730.0 trillion, or $78.88 billion U.S. . Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, video, communications, video game...
's Playstation 2The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony. The PS2 console is the sequel to the original PlayStation console. The successor to the PlayStation, and the predecessor to the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation 2 forms part of the PlayStation series of video game...
CPU Emotion EngineThe Emotion Engine is a CPU developed and manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba for use in the Sony PlayStation 2 video game console, as well as certain PlayStation 3 variants...
is advertised as a 128 bit processor. It has 128-bit SIMD registers, like many processors, but is only a 64-bit processor in the traditional sense as it can only use 64-bit memory addresses.
- The AS/400 virtual instruction set defines all pointers as 128-bit. This gets translated to the hardware's real instruction set as required, allowing the underlying hardware to change without needing to recompile the software. Past hardware was 32-bit CISC, while current hardware is 64-bit PowerPC. Because pointers are defined to be 128-bit, future hardware may be 128-bit without software incompatibility.
- Larger bit rates are also common on graphics card chips with some bus sizes reaching 512-bits long.
History
A 128-bit multicomparator was described by researchers in 1976.
A CPU with 128bit multimedia extensions was designed by researchers in 1999.