Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ukma!uflorida!gatech!gitpyr!kludge
From: kludge@pyr.gatech.EDU (Scott Dorsey)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: More than 32 bits needed where?
Message-ID: <4947@pyr.gatech.EDU>
Date: 5 Feb 88 20:34:35 GMT
References: <235@unicom.UUCP> <28200089@ccvaxa> <3104@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <19667@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <625@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: kludge@pyr.UUCP (Scott Dorsey)
Organization: Georgia College Of Universal Knowledge
Lines: 27

In article <625@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>  Having used 48-bit (B6700) and 36-bit (DEC-10)
>machines, even working at the instruction level of both (a friend and I
>had a hacked version of the B6700 Algol compiler which had an equivalent
>of asm("..")), I have never understood why "word-length = a power of two"
>has such a hypnotic effect on people.

   I routinely code on the CDC 170 machines (60 bit word, 6 bit character)
and the CDC 180 machines (64 bit word, real ASCII).  Overall, the character
handling capability of the long word architecture is pretty good.  The 180's
provide nice conversion routines, and block off 8 character conversions and
string searches with a minimum of bus cycles.  
   Overall, though, it's not worth it.  These machines are excellent number
crunchers (having a 64-bit real is a spectacular thing... Double Precision
is 128 bits!), but most of the power is wasted.  



Scott Dorsey   Kaptain_Kludge
SnailMail: ICS Programming Lab, Georgia Tech, Box 36681, Atlanta, Georgia 30332

   "To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic
    contrivances may be as natural to future times as to us is a 
    literary correspondence."  -- Joseph Glanvill, 1661

Internet:  kludge@pyr.gatech.edu
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