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[107.215.223.229]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id q14-20020a056871080e00b00127ba61535fsm992449oap.15.2022.09.09.13.27.20 (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Fri, 09 Sep 2022 13:27:20 -0700 (PDT) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 16.0 \(3696.120.41.1.1\)) From: Bakul Shah In-Reply-To: Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2022 13:27:19 -0700 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: References: To: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.3696.120.41.1.1) Message-ID-Hash: JV4AMAPUI34U4GLG444MF33LNVJ34TMS X-Message-ID-Hash: JV4AMAPUI34U4GLG444MF33LNVJ34TMS X-MailFrom: bakul@iitbombay.org X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: tuhs@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits? List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Sep 9, 2022, at 12:39 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe = wrote: >=20 > Paul Winalski and Bakul Shah commented on bit addressable machines > on the TUHS list recently. =46rom Blaauw and Brooks' excellent > Computer Architecture book >=20 > http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.html#Blaauw:1997:CAC >=20 > on page 98, I find >=20 >>> ... >>> The earliest computer with bit resolution is the [IBM 7030] Stretch. >>> The Burroughs B1700 (1972) and CDC STAR100 (1973) are later = examples. >>>=20 >>> 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. >>>=20 >>> 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 =46rom 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=E2=80=94operands may be any shape or size, without loss of efficiency; there are no a priori instructions=E2=80=94machine 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.