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From: kludge@gitpyr.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: RISC question
Message-ID: <1550@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 15-Mar-86 14:20:17 EST
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.1550
Posted: Sat Mar 15 14:20:17 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Mar-86 10:46:26 EST
References: <2809@gatech.CSNET> <250@euroies.UUCP>
Reply-To: kludge@gitpyr.UUCP (Scott Dorsey)
Organization: Georgia College Of Universal Knowledge
Lines: 27
Keywords: byte addressing

In article <250@euroies.UUCP> rshepherd@euroies.UUCP (Roger Shepherd INMOS) writes:
>The problem with 24-bit machines (and 40, 48 ...) is that
>they do not have a power of two bytes in a 
>word. This makes byte addressing tricky. This problem can be overcome by

   There is no problem with byte addressing.  All you need is a 12-bit-byte.
With the extra word size, you could implement a bunch of extra useful chars
(as in the 16-bit Extended EBCDIC), and it really wouldn't cost that much
more for your I/O stuff.  In fact, you could use 8-bit I/O and just forget
about the other 4-bits for dumb terminals, but use the extra ones for more
intelligent boxes.  The opportunities are endless.
   Please, don't tell me about how bad the 12-bit character set on the CDC
Cyber machines are.. They aren't even 12-bits long anyway, they are usually
6 bits (except lowercase and special characters, which are 12).  Don't even
ask. 
-- 
-------
Disclaimer: Everything I say is probably a trademark of someone.  But
            don't worry, I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

Scott Dorsey
Kaptain_kludge
ICS Programming Lab (Where old terminals go to die), Rich 110,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332
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