Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!aurora!eos!ames!pasteur!agate!saturn!ucscc.UCSC.EDU!haynes
From: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (99700000)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 16 & 32 bit vs 32 bit only instructions for RISC.
Message-ID: <2116@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 88 04:32:31 GMT
References: <9651@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <9678@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <2574@im4u.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes)
Organization: California State Home for the Weird
Lines: 16

In article <2574@im4u.UUCP> rajiv@im4u.UUCP (Rajiv N. Patel) writes:
>
>   	I agree with Dennis, this is a great topic of DEBATE on comp.arch . I
>   am not sure if it has already been discussed already but its worth while
>   starting again. 
I'm glad somebody brought this up, and while we're also at it let's debate
the value of including 16 bit data types in RISC machines.  A variety
of data sizes slows a machine down almost as much as a variety of
instruction sizes.  I was rather surprised to see that Sun included
16-bit data in SPARC in this day and age of cheap memory.  8-bit data
has the obvious utility for character strings; but do we really need
16-bit integers anymore?

haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu
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