Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!ames!oliveb!felix!peterg From: peterg@felix.UUCP (Peter Gruenbeck) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.internat Subject: Re: What is a byte Message-ID: <6031@felix.UUCP> Date: Thu, 20-Aug-87 14:15:59 EDT Article-I.D.: felix.6031 Posted: Thu Aug 20 14:15:59 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 23-Aug-87 04:24:51 EDT References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <8409@utzoo.UUCP> <1564@frog.UUCP> Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP Reply-To: peterg@felix.UUCP (Peter Gruenbeck) Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA Lines: 30 Keywords: 32 bit bytes! You ain't seen nothin', yet. Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:3808 comp.std.internat:141 --------------- Disclaimer: I may not know what I'm talking about. Batteries not included. --------------- I have difficulty getting used to the idea of a 32 bit byte. What would happen the the nybble (half a byte - get it?). Would we be biting off more than we could chew? I would be in favor of leaving a byte as 8 bits and using the term WORD to represent a unit of addressable memory. That way we limit the confusion of how many bits something has to a term which is already confusing. For example: Many small computers (6502, 808x, 68000) have a word = 8 bits. Some older mainframe systems (IBM 370, Cyber, DEC) have word lengths of 32 bits, 12 bits, 60 bits. Some specialized engines (Itel 370 compatable) have 80 bit words for the microcode intrepreters. Also, some PC ram disks may be considered to have 128 byte words since that is what you address and then take the rest sequentially. New machines to handle the complex multi-language problem may have a 32 bit word if that is what a character takes. Maybe we should define a new term called a CHAR to define the number of bits required to represent a character. I'm told I'm quite a character myself at times. I suspect you'll need more than 32 bits to define me (I hope). This is not to say that this is the final WORD.