Ok this may be a dumb question, i know cpus have gone from 32bit to 64bit, But do you think they will go to 128bit in the foreseeable future? like 5 years or so. Just curious.

Nope. Too soon.

We needed around 20 years to get form the 64K RAM limit of a 16bit to the 4GB RAM limit of a 32bit architecture in an average desktop computer.

2^16 = 65,536 = 64KiB
2^32 = 4,294,967,296 = 4GiB
2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 = 4Gi*4GiB = 18EiB

I think its quite safe to say we are still good for at least 10-15 years with 64bit on the common desktop.

lol... really i doubt programs will require anywhere beyond 4 gbs for years... so yeah silly question

While 64 bit CPUs are abundunt and you can get 64 bit OSes 64 bit computing has not taken off. In fact it will probably be another 5 years before it catches on. As of right now I'm not sure if it's even worth using. From what I've seen it doesn't really give you an advantage.

128bit
2^128 =340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456

You are kidding, right? Some software already needs more than 4 GB.

I can buy a 4GB DDR2-800 kit on Newegg.com for $70. My next system will have 8GB. I have programs now that are capable of using as much RAM as I can throw at it. If you run VMware then you probably know what I mean. With the advent of more multithreaded software programming I think we may see system memory requirements take a big leap. Also memory technologies are catching up to the need so its the perfect time for software to take that next step.

There's really no benefit to 128-bit computing over 64-bit unless you're doing some weird scientific or engineering work that needs to process very large numbers rapidly. So I don't expect to see it for a very long time.

Hardly surprising when most of those tests are FPU-limited or GPU-limited... that's kind of like complaining that the top speed of your car doesn't increase when you replace a 1.2 liter four-cylinder engine with a 12 liter V-8, but keep the same gearbox and the same rev limit.

It could happen that we see the first 128 bit cpu in a few years, but not because of memory address limitations.
The merging of GPU and CPU could lead to the introduction of 256 bit precision floating point units sooner than most anticipate though. While that is not true >64bit it is heading in the right direction.

While it is usefull in scientific applications such hardware has no use on the common desktop (128bit)
Maybe a 256bit precission FPU would appear as a custom add in board like todays PPUs and GPUs.

For every day computer usage 32bit precission FPU is "good enough" and it offers a 7 decimal digit precission.
64bit offers 15 decimal digits and for let us say 4MPixel displays in 3D graphics that's already overkill.
That's why todays graphics cards use single precission FPU (32bits).
CAD is another story, but again I see custom add in boards for those applications (as today).

But that is just a FPU. There is even less use for 128bit integers.

x86 needs to die and we need someone to give us a decent OS that will run on whatever replaces x86.

errrrr forgot this....

Here are some interesting alternatives to x86


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7085019.stm


DNA computing ftw

Like Toshibas Spurs Engine, just with a wider bus. We'll probably see Intel doing someting like that with 64bit though.