[TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?

[TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Paul Winalski and Bakul Shah commented on bit addressable machines
on the TUHS list recently.  From Blaauw and Brooks' excellent
Computer Architecture book

	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.html#Blaauw:1997:CAC

on page 98, I find

>> ...
>> The earliest computer with bit resolution is the [IBM 7030] Stretch.
>> The Burroughs B1700 (1972) and CDC STAR100 (1973) are later examples.
>>
>> Bit resolution is costly in format space, since it uses a maximum
>> number of bits for address and length specification.  Sharpening
>> resolution from the byte to the bit costs the same as increasing
>> address-space size eight-fold.
>>
>> Since almost all storage realizations are organized as matrices,
>> bit resolution is also expensive in time or equipment.
>> ...

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- University of Utah                                                          -
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[TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?

[Bakul Shah]

On Sep 9, 2022, at 12:39 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe@math.utah.edu> wrote:
> 
> Paul Winalski and Bakul Shah commented on bit addressable machines
> on the TUHS list recently.  From Blaauw and Brooks' excellent
> Computer Architecture book
> 
> 	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.html#Blaauw:1997:CAC
> 
> on page 98, I find
> 
>>> ...
>>> The earliest computer with bit resolution is the [IBM 7030] Stretch.
>>> The Burroughs B1700 (1972) and CDC STAR100 (1973) are later examples.
>>> 
>>> Bit resolution is costly in format space, since it uses a maximum
>>> number of bits for address and length specification.  Sharpening
>>> resolution from the byte to the bit costs the same as increasing
>>> address-space size eight-fold.
>>> 
>>> Since almost all storage realizations are organized as matrices,
>>> bit resolution is also expensive in time or equipment.
>>> ...

And yet according to Wilner's article "the B1700 appears to
require less than half the memory needed by byte-oriented
systems to represent programs. Comparisons with word-oriented
systems are even more favorable."

Figure 9 shows sample sizes for Cobol, Fortran and RPG II programs
comparing B1700 code sizes with other systems. I was surprised to
see this but didn't look further.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1479992.1480060

From the same paper

  DESIGN OBJECTIVE

  Burroughs B1700 is a protean attempt to completely vanquish
  procrustean structures, to give 100 percent variability, or
  the appearance of no inherent structure. Without inherent
  structure, any definable language can be efficiently used
  for computing. There are no word sizes or data
  formats—operands may be any shape or size, without loss of
  efficiency; there are no a priori instructions—machine
  operations may be any function, in any form, without loss
  of efficiency; configuration limits, while not totally
  removable, can be made to exist only as points of "graceful
  degradation" of performance; modularity may be increased,
  to allow miniconfigurations and supercomputers using the
  same components.

[TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?

[Henry Bent]

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On Fri, 9 Sept 2022 at 16:28, Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:

> On Sep 9, 2022, at 12:39 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe@math.utah.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> > Paul Winalski and Bakul Shah commented on bit addressable machines
> > on the TUHS list recently.  From Blaauw and Brooks' excellent
> > Computer Architecture book
> >
> >       http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.html#Blaauw:1997:CAC
> >
> > on page 98, I find
> >
> >>> ...
> >>> The earliest computer with bit resolution is the [IBM 7030] Stretch.
> >>> The Burroughs B1700 (1972) and CDC STAR100 (1973) are later examples.
> >>>
> >>> Bit resolution is costly in format space, since it uses a maximum
> >>> number of bits for address and length specification.  Sharpening
> >>> resolution from the byte to the bit costs the same as increasing
> >>> address-space size eight-fold.
> >>>
> >>> Since almost all storage realizations are organized as matrices,
> >>> bit resolution is also expensive in time or equipment.
> >>> ...
>
> And yet according to Wilner's article "the B1700 appears to
> require less than half the memory needed by byte-oriented
> systems to represent programs. Comparisons with word-oriented
> systems are even more favorable."
>
> Figure 9 shows sample sizes for Cobol, Fortran and RPG II programs
> comparing B1700 code sizes with other systems. I was surprised to
> see this but didn't look further.
>
> https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1479992.1480060
>
> From the same paper
>
>   DESIGN OBJECTIVE
>
>   Burroughs B1700 is a protean attempt to completely vanquish
>   procrustean structures, to give 100 percent variability, or
>   the appearance of no inherent structure. Without inherent
>   structure, any definable language can be efficiently used
>   for computing. There are no word sizes or data
>   formats—operands may be any shape or size, without loss of
>   efficiency; there are no a priori instructions—machine
>   operations may be any function, in any form, without loss
>   of efficiency; configuration limits, while not totally
>   removable, can be made to exist only as points of "graceful
>   degradation" of performance; modularity may be increased,
>   to allow miniconfigurations and supercomputers using the
>   same components.
>
>
The level of florid language in that paper is truly impressive.

This appears to be an early implementation of intermediate language
representation.  I gather by its relative level of success (I had not heard
of it until now) that it suffered from many of the common performance
problems of such machines (Java bytecode, the Transmeta CPU, etc.) and did
not succeed in the marketplace.

-Henry

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[TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?

[Dave Horsfall]

On Fri, 9 Sep 2022, Bakul Shah wrote:

> And yet according to Wilner's article "the B1700 appears to require less 
> than half the memory needed by byte-oriented systems to represent 
> programs. Comparisons with word-oriented systems are even more 
> favorable."

The Burroughs series were beautiful machines; the hardware ran native
ALGOL (and thus were perfect); my favourite "B" still remains the B1500.

Things went downhill after the unholy alliance betwixt M$ and Inhell...

> Figure 9 shows sample sizes for Cobol, Fortran and RPG II programs
> comparing B1700 code sizes with other systems. I was surprised to
> see this but didn't look further.

COBOL?  FORTRAN?  RPG?  Those are all swear words to me :-)

-- Dave

[TUHS] Obscene languages (was: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Saturday, 10 September 2022 at  7:44:57 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> COBOL?  FORTRAN?  RPG?  Those are all swear words to me :-)

Is this an indirect reference to the "Programmer's ABC" in the March
1976 issue of Datamation?  I have a copy of the lot at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/Humour/ABC.php, but the one I think you're
referring to is:

  L is for language; use these three.
  Cobol, Fortran, RPG.
  Avoid all others, friend, and shun
  Those with the suffix "L slash I."

And yes, I share your sentiment.

Greg
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