Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!mephisto!mcnc!ncsuvx!news From: rcb@ccpv1.cc.ncsu.edu (Randy Buckland) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Why not 48-bit processors? Message-ID: Date: 28 Aug 90 22:16:44 GMT References: <5539@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <13285@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <30728@super.ORG> <15249@drilex.UUCP> <2081@key.COM> Sender: news@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: NCSU Computing Center Lines: 20 sjc@key.COM (Steve Correll) writes: >In article <41004@mips.mips.COM> mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) writes: >> [Why not 48-bit processors?] >>1) Software inertia strongly impels people to build machines whose >>words contain 2**n bytes, for C especially, but also for other languages. >In article <15249@drilex.UUCP>, dricejb@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson drilex1) writes: >> I think C would be the chief offender here--few other languages expose >> the characters/word ratio quite as much. > INTEGER*4 I(5) > DATA I / 4HDon', 4Ht fo, 4Hrget, 4HFort, 4Hran! / > WRITE(6, 100) I >100 FORMAT(5A4) > END I try to forget Fortran (yuck!) whenever possible. The above is one of the reasons for this. -- Randy Buckland North Carolina State University randy@ncsu.edu (919) 737-2517