Re: "A diagram of C23 basic types"

On 4/14/2025 5:33 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:36:07 -0500, BGB wrote:
 

On 4/14/2025 12:40 PM, candycanearter07 wrote:
>

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote at 04:33 this Monday (GMT):
>

I worked out that an integer of a little over 200 bits is sufficient
to represent the age of the known Universe in units of the Planck
interval (5.39e-44 seconds). Therefore, rounding to something more
even, 256 bits should be more than enough to measure any physically
conceivable time down to that resolution.

>
The problem then becomes storing that size.

>
More practical is storing the time in microseconds.

 Relative to what epoch?
 

Probably still Jan 1 1970...
But, +/- a few decades (or centuries, or millennia) wont matter much over a half million years or so.
If humans as we know them are still around by the time it rolls over (eg, not extinct or mutated into something different), they can probably figure it out.
Or, we could possibly even put the epoch 200k years in the future or something.

I figured that it would be hard to find an epoch less arbitrary than the
Big Bang ...

But, we don't really need it.
If so, could probably extend to 128 bits, maybe go to nanoseconds or picoseconds. This would more than cover the current age of the universe...
But, it is overkill for current use.
Meanwhile, one can do math on 64 bit values without too much hassle.