Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:8286 comp.arch:3966
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!eos!aurora!labrea!decwrl!pyramid!prls!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Bit Addressable Architectures
Message-ID: <2767@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: 15 Mar 88 20:42:19 GMT
References: <11702@brl-adm.ARPA> <243@eagle_snax.UUCP> <2245@geac.UUCP> <1988Mar6.002518.945@utzoo.uucp> <2760@mmintl.UUCP> <17458@watmath.waterloo.edu> <7452@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Ashton-Tate Corporation, East Hartford Development Center
Lines: 15

In article <7452@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>It's occasionally been tried, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with
>the idea.  The biggest reason for lack of popularity is that it doesn't help
>much with the code generated for typical existing high-level langauges; they
>often don't provide convenient access to bit-level data, so applications are
>coded to access data in larger chunks and pick it apart themselves.

Of course, high-level languages which provide convenient access to bit-level
data have been tried occasionally, and haven't been very popular.  The
biggest reason for this is that popular machine architectures don't provide
efficient access to bit-level data, so applications are coded to access data
in larger chunks and pick it apart themselves.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108