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From: chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: information content of DNA
Message-ID: <1245@husc2.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Apr-87 03:06:49 EST
Article-I.D.: husc2.1245
Posted: Mon Apr  6 03:06:49 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Apr-87 03:21:27 EST
References: <2840@ecsvax.UUCP> <11189@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> <978@aecom.UUCP> <425@haddock.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Ctr., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 23
Summary: Check out the (*blargh*) 8086

In article <425@haddock.UUCP>, johnc@haddock.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
> I wonder if anyone has ever built a computer with the possibility of multiple
> "reading frames".  Consider an 8-bit memory, but a 16-bit instruction size.
> If you start executing at address A and at A+1, you get two possibly very
> different programs.  Can any real-life processors do this?  It happens
> with DNA quite often.

	Actually, you don't need 16-bit instruction size to do this, just an
8-bit instruction which expects some bytes of data immediately following it.
This is the case on most processors (although in some cases the relevant
numbers of bits are 16 and 32 or more); you can observe such an effect even on
a 6502.  The problem on processors is compounded by the fact that they store
states much more than enzymes, so that even if an instruction is at A and the
next one at A + 1, the program may behave very differently depending on the
address at which execution begins.

-- 
	-- Lucius Chiaraviglio
	   lucius@tardis.harvard.edu
	   seismo!tardis.harvard.edu!lucius

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