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* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
@ 2022-09-11 13:30 Douglas McIlroy
  2022-09-11 15:08 ` John Cowan
  2022-09-11 15:30 ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Douglas McIlroy @ 2022-09-11 13:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

Anecdote prompted by the advent of Burroughs in this thread:

At the 1968 NATO conference on Software Engineering, the discussion
turned to language design strategies. I noted that the design of Algol
68, for example, presupposed a word-based machine, whereupon Burroughs
architect Bob Barton brought the house down with the remark, "In the
beginning was the Word, all right--but it was not a fixed number of
bits!"

[Algol 68's presupposition is visible in declarations like "long long
long ... int". An implementation need support only a limited number of
"longs", but each supported variety must have a definite maximum
value, which is returned by an "environment enquiry" function. For
amusement, consider the natural idea of implementing the longest
variety with bignums.]

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-11 13:30 [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits? Douglas McIlroy
@ 2022-09-11 15:08 ` John Cowan
  2022-09-11 15:30 ` Bakul Shah
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: John Cowan @ 2022-09-11 15:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Douglas McIlroy; +Cc: TUHS main list

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On Sun, Sep 11, 2022 at 9:31 AM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:


> [Algol 68's presupposition is visible in declarations like "long long
> long ... int". An implementation need support only a limited number of
> "longs",


To clarify things for A68 n00bs, you can *write* an indefinite number of
"longs", but after an implementation-defined point they don't add any
further range (and/or precision in the case of floats).  This is true in a
truncated way in C as well, where "long" (which is the same as "long int")
may be the same as "int".

> but each supported variety must have a definite maximum
> value, which is returned by an "environment enquiry" function. For
> amusement, consider the natural idea of implementing the longest
> variety with bignums.]
>

In actual bignum implementations, there is a biggest bignum, but it may not
be possible to actually construct it.  In GMP using 64-bit digits, it is
theoretically 2^((2^31 - 1) * (2^64 - 1)), or
2^39,614,081,238,685,424,720,914,939,905, which is Very Big Indeed.  But
there is nothing preventing an implementer from watching intermediate
results and throwing an exception if they get too big.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-11 13:30 [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits? Douglas McIlroy
  2022-09-11 15:08 ` John Cowan
@ 2022-09-11 15:30 ` Bakul Shah
  2022-09-11 15:45   ` Paul Winalski
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2022-09-11 15:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Douglas McIlroy; +Cc: TUHS main list

On Sep 11, 2022, at 6:30 AM, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> [Algol 68's presupposition is visible in declarations like "long long
> long ... int". An implementation need support only a limited number of
> "longs", but each supported variety must have a definite maximum
> value, which is returned by an "environment enquiry" function. For
> amusement, consider the natural idea of implementing the longest
> variety with bignums.]

It would be natural to use a Kleene star to represent an arbitrarily
long string of LONGs -- "long* int" -- though AFAIK Algol68 doesn't
do bignums. Weirdly even most 21st century progamming languages do
not provide built-in support for bignums!

C's INT_MAX, LONG_MAX etc are kind of an environment enquiry...

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-11 15:30 ` Bakul Shah
@ 2022-09-11 15:45   ` Paul Winalski
  2022-09-11 16:20     ` Steve Nickolas
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Paul Winalski @ 2022-09-11 15:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bakul Shah; +Cc: Douglas McIlroy, TUHS main list

On 9/11/22, Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:
>
> C's INT_MAX, LONG_MAX etc are kind of an environment enquiry...

What size to use in  C for int and long (pointers had to be 64-bit; no
issue there) was a big headache for DEC in the migration of Unix
(Ultrix) from VAX to Alpha.   The first C compiler implementation used
ILP64 (64 bits for int, long, and pointer) and ran afoul of a lot of
code that assumed an int was 32 bits.  ILP64 vs. LP64 because as
divisive an issue as the big-endian vs. little-endian debate.

-Paul W.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-11 15:45   ` Paul Winalski
@ 2022-09-11 16:20     ` Steve Nickolas
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Steve Nickolas @ 2022-09-11 16:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

On Sun, 11 Sep 2022, Paul Winalski wrote:

> On 9/11/22, Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:
>>
>> C's INT_MAX, LONG_MAX etc are kind of an environment enquiry...
>
> What size to use in  C for int and long (pointers had to be 64-bit; no
> issue there) was a big headache for DEC in the migration of Unix
> (Ultrix) from VAX to Alpha.   The first C compiler implementation used
> ILP64 (64 bits for int, long, and pointer) and ran afoul of a lot of
> code that assumed an int was 32 bits.  ILP64 vs. LP64 because as
> divisive an issue as the big-endian vs. little-endian debate.
>
> -Paul W.

When I first wrote C code I *assumed* things that were only necessarily 
true on the platform I learned on (char=8, short=16, long=32; int=16, 
pointer could be either 16 or 32, requiring the addition of the keywords 
"near" and "far").

(I'm glad C99 introduced <stdint.h>, but on that platform the only C99 
compiler is OpenWatcom.)

-uso.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-09  1:33 Douglas McIlroy
  2022-09-09  2:12 ` Larry McVoy
  2022-09-09  2:45 ` George Michaelson
@ 2022-09-16  5:55 ` Marc Donner
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Marc Donner @ 2022-09-16  5:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Douglas McIlroy; +Cc: TUHS main list

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BTW, IBM’s “Computer Museum” has (had?) a (the?) Stretch and Harvest.  The
“museum” is a warehouse full of old stuff.

On Thu, Sep 8, 2022 at 9:35 PM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:

>  > I heard that the IBM 709
> > series had 36 bit words because Arthur Samuel,
> > then at IBM, needed 32 bits to identify the playable squares on a
> > checkerboard, plus some bits for color and kinged
>
> To be precise, Samuel's checkers program was written for
> the 701, which originated the architecture that the 709 inherited.
>
> Note that IBM punched cards had 72 data columns plus 8
> columns typically dedicated to sequence numbers. 700-series
> machines supported binary IO encoded two words per row, 12
> rows per card--a perfect fit to established technology. (I do
> not know whether the fit was deliberate or accidental.)
>
> As to where the byte came from, it was christened for the IBM
> Stretch, aka 7020. The machine was bit-addressed and the width
> of a byte was variable. Multidimensional arrays of packed bytes
> could be streamed at blinding speeds. Eight bits, which synced
> well with the 7020's 64-bit words, was standardized in the 360
> series. The term "byte" was not used in connection with
> 700-series machines.
>
> Doug
>
-- 
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>

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* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term  "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-09  2:12 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-09-13 14:23   ` John Foust via TUHS
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: John Foust via TUHS @ 2022-09-13 14:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

At 09:12 PM 9/8/2022, Larry McVoy wrote:
>My first job after school, I got to watch Neil toggle in the bootstrap
>stuff at the console.  He wasn't Seymour but he was very very good.
>One of the more substantial people I've ever met, I would guess he
>has passed but if he hasn't, he would like this group of people.

He passed away in 2007:

https://www.msthalloffame.org/neil_robert_lincoln.htm

Lincoln died on Jan. 26, 2007, at age 69. He was a member of the American 
Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics and holds nine U.S. patents for 
computer hardware. He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the Institute of 
Electronics and Electrical Engineers, a National Lecturer of the 
Association for Computer Machinery and on the Advisory Committee 
on Science and Technology Centers for the National Science Foundation.

- John



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-09 18:46 Norman Wilson
@ 2022-09-10  1:35 ` Paul Winalski
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Paul Winalski @ 2022-09-10  1:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Norman Wilson; +Cc: tuhs

On 9/9/22, Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:
>
> IThe DEC-10 had `byte pointers' as well as
> (36-bit) word addresses.  A byte pointer comprised an address,
> a starting bit within the addressed word, and a length.
> There were instructions to load and store an addressed byte
> to or from a register, and to do same while incrementing
> the pointer to the next byte, wrapping the start of the next
> word if the remainder of the current word was too small.
> (Bytes couldn't span word boundaries.)

That very closely resembles a field-reference expression in BLISS,
which has the syntax:

addr<start, len, ext> where:

addr is an expression whose value is the address of the BLISS word
containing the field

start is an expression whose value is the stating offset within that
word of the field

len is an expression giving the length of the field in bits

ext is an expression whose value is either 0 0r 1 that tells how to
pad out the field to a full BLISS word size

It's probably no accident that BLISS field expressions match this
feature of the DEC-10 hardware.

-Paul W.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in   collection of bits?
  2022-09-09 20:27 ` Bakul Shah
  2022-09-09 21:12   ` Henry Bent
@ 2022-09-09 21:44   ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2022-09-09 21:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-09 20:27 ` Bakul Shah
@ 2022-09-09 21:12   ` Henry Bent
  2022-09-09 21:44   ` Dave Horsfall
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Henry Bent @ 2022-09-09 21:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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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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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in   collection of bits?
  2022-09-09 19:39 Nelson H. F. Beebe
@ 2022-09-09 20:27 ` Bakul Shah
  2022-09-09 21:12   ` Henry Bent
  2022-09-09 21:44   ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2022-09-09 20:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Nelson H. F. Beebe; +Cc: tuhs

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.


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in        collection of bits?
@ 2022-09-09 19:39 Nelson H. F. Beebe
  2022-09-09 20:27 ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Nelson H. F. Beebe @ 2022-09-09 19:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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.
>> ...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                                                          -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe@acm.org  beebe@computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
@ 2022-09-09 18:46 Norman Wilson
  2022-09-10  1:35 ` Paul Winalski
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Norman Wilson @ 2022-09-09 18:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Doug McIlroy:

  Bit-addressing is very helpful for manipulating characters
  in a word-organized memory. The central idea of my ancient
  (patented!) string macros that underlay SNOBOL was that it's
  more efficient to refer to 6-bit characters as living at
  bits 0,6,12,... of a 36-bit word than as being characters
  0,1,2,... of the word. I've heard that this convention was
  supported in hardware on the PDP-10.

====

Indeed it was.  The DEC-10 had `byte pointers' as well as
(36-bit) word addresses.  A byte pointer comprised an address,
a starting bit within the addressed word, and a length.
There were instructions to load and store an addressed byte
to or from a register, and to do same while incrementing
the pointer to the next byte, wrapping the start of the next
word if the remainder of the current word was too small.
(Bytes couldn't span word boundaries.)

Byte pointers were used routinely to process text.  ASCII
text was conventionally stored as five 7-bit bytes packed
into each 36-bit word.  The leftover bit was used by some
programs as a flag to mean these five characters (usually
the first of a line) were special, e.g. represented a
five-decimal-digit line number.

Byte pointers were used to access Sixbit characters as
well (each character six bits, so six to the word,
character set comprising the 64-character subset of
ASCII starting with 0 == space).

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(spent about four years playing with TOPS-10 before
growing up to play with UNIX)

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-09 15:49     ` Paul Winalski
@ 2022-09-09 18:44       ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2022-09-09 18:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Paul Winalski; +Cc: tuhs

On Sep 9, 2022, at 8:49 AM, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Have there been other commercially sold computers without a fixed word length?

Burroughs B1700? It was a bit addressable machine.


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
@ 2022-09-09 17:26 Douglas McIlroy
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Douglas McIlroy @ 2022-09-09 17:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

> Doug or anyone, why do bit pointers make sense?  Why?

Bit-addressing is very helpful for manipulating characters
in a word-organized memory. The central idea of my ancient
(patented!) string macros that underlay SNOBOL was that it's
more efficient to refer to 6-bit characters as living at
bits 0,6,12,... of a 36-bit word than as being characters
0,1,2,... of the word. I've heard that this convention was
supported in hardware on the PDP-10.

In the IBM 7020 floats and ints were word-addressed. But
those addresses could be extended past the "decimal point"
to refer to bits. Bits were important. The computer was designed
in parallel with the Harvest streaming "attachment" for
NSA. Harvest was basically intended to gather statistics useful
in code-breaking, such as frequency counts and autocorrelations,
for data typically encoded in packed 5- to 8-bit characters. It
was controlled by a 20-word "setup" that specified operations on
rectangular and triangular indexing patterns in multidimensional
arrays. Going beyond statistics, one of the operations was SQML
(sequential multiple lookup) where each character was looked
up in a table that specified a replacement and a next table--a
spec for an arbitrary Turing machine that moved its tape at
byte-streaming speed!

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-09  0:00   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
@ 2022-09-09 15:49     ` Paul Winalski
  2022-09-09 18:44       ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Paul Winalski @ 2022-09-09 15:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

The IBM 1620 had an unusual architecture in that it did decimal
arithmetic operating on variable-length strings of BCD-encoded decimal
digits.  It thus didn't really have a word length at all.  It also
didn't have a proper ALU--it did arithmetic by table lookup.  The
internal code name for the machine was CADET, which was said to stand
for "Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try".  Arithmetic on variable-length
decimal strings was a feature carried over to the System/360/370 and
also the DEC VAX.

Have there been other commercially sold computers without a fixed word length?

-Paul W.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-09  1:33 Douglas McIlroy
  2022-09-09  2:12 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-09-09  2:45 ` George Michaelson
  2022-09-16  5:55 ` Marc Donner
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: George Michaelson @ 2022-09-09  2:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

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There is a certain amount of "use makes master" about word and byte length.
I think DECs decision to go with 6bit for 36bit was probably fine, in the
context of belief around BCD. That it turned out to be a royal pain in the
neck for an 8 byte world was a bit overblown given its time and place.
People found ways to exploit 4 extra bits in a word to do things. DEC
provided the UUO mechanism, people coded odd things into it. If BCD had
been more significant who knows how long packed ASCII might have lasted.

The entire field from bletchley onwards was full of arch, fey witticisms
about machine names. ending things with -AC (for automatic computer) led to
SILLIAC in Sydney Uni and there was a sort of poem which included them all
to MANIAC. I can't but think the neologism byte over 'bite sized chunks of
a whole word' goes directly to this tendency to play with language. And,
the times were ones with many strange players on many continents, fertile
ground for wordplay.

8 is a useful number. 5 hole Baudot wasn't enough: with parity and cases
and control signal in band data was heading to 8 irrespective.

Aligning data with memory and registers makes sense.

On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 9:35 AM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>
>  > I heard that the IBM 709
> > series had 36 bit words because Arthur Samuel,
> > then at IBM, needed 32 bits to identify the playable squares on a
> > checkerboard, plus some bits for color and kinged
>
> To be precise, Samuel's checkers program was written for
> the 701, which originated the architecture that the 709 inherited.
>
> Note that IBM punched cards had 72 data columns plus 8
> columns typically dedicated to sequence numbers. 700-series
> machines supported binary IO encoded two words per row, 12
> rows per card--a perfect fit to established technology. (I do
> not know whether the fit was deliberate or accidental.)
>
> As to where the byte came from, it was christened for the IBM
> Stretch, aka 7020. The machine was bit-addressed and the width
> of a byte was variable. Multidimensional arrays of packed bytes
> could be streamed at blinding speeds. Eight bits, which synced
> well with the 7020's 64-bit words, was standardized in the 360
> series. The term "byte" was not used in connection with
> 700-series machines.
>
> Doug

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-09  1:33 Douglas McIlroy
@ 2022-09-09  2:12 ` Larry McVoy
  2022-09-13 14:23   ` John Foust via TUHS
  2022-09-09  2:45 ` George Michaelson
  2022-09-16  5:55 ` Marc Donner
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-09-09  2:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Douglas McIlroy; +Cc: TUHS main list

On Thu, Sep 08, 2022 at 09:33:42PM -0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> As to where the byte came from, it was christened for the IBM
> Stretch, aka 7020. The machine was bit-addressed and the width
> of a byte was variable. 

Huh, I did a lot of the Unix port to the ETA-10, that was the only
machine that I encountered that had bit pointers.  I never understood
why that was a thing, Doug, do you know the rationale for bit pointers?

The ETA-10 is not well known, I was part of the Lachman group:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA10

My first job after school, I got to watch Neil toggle in the bootstrap
stuff at the console.  He wasn't Seymour but he was very very good.
One of the more substantial people I've ever met, I would guess he
has passed but if he hasn't, he would like this group of people.

Whatever, Doug or anyone, why do bit pointers make sense?  Why?

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
@ 2022-09-09  1:33 Douglas McIlroy
  2022-09-09  2:12 ` Larry McVoy
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Douglas McIlroy @ 2022-09-09  1:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

 > I heard that the IBM 709
> series had 36 bit words because Arthur Samuel,
> then at IBM, needed 32 bits to identify the playable squares on a
> checkerboard, plus some bits for color and kinged

To be precise, Samuel's checkers program was written for
the 701, which originated the architecture that the 709 inherited.

Note that IBM punched cards had 72 data columns plus 8
columns typically dedicated to sequence numbers. 700-series
machines supported binary IO encoded two words per row, 12
rows per card--a perfect fit to established technology. (I do
not know whether the fit was deliberate or accidental.)

As to where the byte came from, it was christened for the IBM
Stretch, aka 7020. The machine was bit-addressed and the width
of a byte was variable. Multidimensional arrays of packed bytes
could be streamed at blinding speeds. Eight bits, which synced
well with the 7020's 64-bit words, was standardized in the 360
series. The term "byte" was not used in connection with
700-series machines.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-08 17:28 ` Dan Halbert
@ 2022-09-09  0:00   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2022-09-09 15:49     ` Paul Winalski
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey @ 2022-09-09  0:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Halbert, Jim Capp, Noel Chiappa; +Cc: tuhs

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On Thursday,  8 September 2022 at 13:28:13 -0400, Dan Halbert wrote:
>
> I also looked in the Oxford English Dictionary for etymology. It has:
>
>     *d.* /Computing/. A consecutive string of bits (now typically 16,
>     32, or 64, but formerly fewer) that can be transferred and stored as
>     a unit./machine word/: see /machine word/ n. at machine n. Compounds
>     2 <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.bpl.org/view/Entry/111850#eid38480019>.
>
>     1946 H. H. Goldstine & J. Von Neumann in J. von Neumann /Coll. Wks./
>     (1963) V. 28   In ‘writing’ a word into the memory, it is similarly
>     not only the time effectively consumed in ‘writing’ which matters,
>     but also the time needed to ‘find’ the specified location in the memory.

Since we're searching the OED, there are a couple of others.  The
/machine word/ mentioned above has:

  machine word n. Computing: a word of the length appropriate for a
  	          particular fixed word-length computer.

  1954 Computers & Automation Dec. 16/1 Machine word, a unit of
       information of a standard number of characters, which a machine
       regularly handles in each register.

This makes the meaning clearer, I think, though it doesn't seem to be
a change in meaning.

On Thursday,  8 September 2022 at 17:16:35 -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>
> Looking a little further, Turing's ACE Report, from 1946, uses the
> term (section 4, pg. 25; "minor cycle, or word"). My copy, the one
> edited by Carpenter and Doran, has a note #1 by them, "Turing seems
> to be the first user of 'word' with this meaning." I have Brian's
> email, I can ask him how they came to that determination, if you'd
> like.

I don't see that this is the same meaning.  Do you?  "Minor cycle"
suggests timing parameters.  But it would be interesting to know
whether this document pre- or postdates Goldstine and von Neumann.

And since we were also talking about bits, it seems that OED has its
own entry,  bit, n.4:

  A unit of information derived from a choice between two equally
  probable alternatives or ‘events’; such a unit stored electronically
  in a computer.

  1948 C. E. Shannon in Bell Syst. Techn. Jrnl. July 380 The choice of
       a logarithmic base corresponds to the choice of a unit for
       measuring information. If the base 2 is used the resulting
       units may be called binary digits, or more briefly bits, a word
       suggested by J. W. Tukey.

Greg
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-08 21:16 Noel Chiappa
@ 2022-09-08 21:24 ` Dan Halbert
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Dan Halbert @ 2022-09-08 21:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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I did send this already, from 1946, did you see it?

The famous 1946 paper, "Preliminary discussion of the logical design of 
an electronic computing device",  by Arthur Burks,  Herman H. Goldstine, 
John von Neumann, contains this sentence. I have this paper in Computer 
Structures: Readings and Examples, by Bell and Newell, but it's also 
online in many forms

4. The memory organ

4.1. Ideally one would desire an indefinitely large memory capacity such 
that any particular aggregate of 40 binary digits, or -word- (cf. 2.3), 
would be immediately available-i.e. in a time which is somewhat or 
considerably shorter than the operation time of a fast electronic 
multiplier.

[word is in italics]

On 9/8/22 17:16, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>      > From: Jim Capp
>
>      > See "The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer",
>      > by Maurice V. Wilkes, David J. Wheeler, and Stanley Gill
>
> Blast! I looked in the index in my copy (ex the Caltech CS Dept Library :-),
> but didn't find 'word' in the index!
>
> Looking a little further, Turing's ACE Report, from 1946, uses the term
> (section 4, pg. 25; "minor cycle, or word"). My copy, the one edited by
> Carpenter and Doran, has a note #1 by them, "Turing seems to be the first
> user of 'word' with this meaning." I have Brian's email, I can ask him how
> they came to that determination, if you'd like.
>
> There aren't many things older than that! I looked quickly through the "First
> Draft on the EDVAC", 1945 (re-printed in "From ENIAC to UNIVAC", by Stein),
> but did not see word there. It does use the term "minor cycle", though.
>
> Other places worth checking are the IBM/Harvard Mark I, the ENIAC and ...
> I guess therer's not much else! Oh, there was a relay machine at Bell, too.
> The Atanasoff-Berry computer?
>
>
>      > From: "John P. Linderman"
>
>      > He claims that if you wanted to do decimal arithmetic on a binary
>      > machine, you'd want to have 10 digits of accuracy to capture the 10
>      > digit log tables that were then popular.
>
> The EDVAC draft talks about needing 8 decimal digits (Appendix A, pg.190);
> apparently von Neumann knew that that's how many digits one needed for
> reasonable accuracy in differential equations. That is 27 "binary digits"
> (apparently 'bit' hadn't been coined yet).
>
> 	Noel

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
@ 2022-09-08 21:16 Noel Chiappa
  2022-09-08 21:24 ` Dan Halbert
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2022-09-08 21:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > From: Jim Capp

    > See "The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer",
    > by Maurice V. Wilkes, David J. Wheeler, and Stanley Gill

Blast! I looked in the index in my copy (ex the Caltech CS Dept Library :-),
but didn't find 'word' in the index!

Looking a little further, Turing's ACE Report, from 1946, uses the term
(section 4, pg. 25; "minor cycle, or word"). My copy, the one edited by
Carpenter and Doran, has a note #1 by them, "Turing seems to be the first
user of 'word' with this meaning." I have Brian's email, I can ask him how
they came to that determination, if you'd like.

There aren't many things older than that! I looked quickly through the "First
Draft on the EDVAC", 1945 (re-printed in "From ENIAC to UNIVAC", by Stein),
but did not see word there. It does use the term "minor cycle", though.

Other places worth checking are the IBM/Harvard Mark I, the ENIAC and ...
I guess therer's not much else! Oh, there was a relay machine at Bell, too.
The Atanasoff-Berry computer?


    > From: "John P. Linderman"

    > He claims that if you wanted to do decimal arithmetic on a binary
    > machine, you'd want to have 10 digits of accuracy to capture the 10
    > digit log tables that were then popular.

The EDVAC draft talks about needing 8 decimal digits (Appendix A, pg.190);
apparently von Neumann knew that that's how many digits one needed for
reasonable accuracy in differential equations. That is 27 "binary digits"
(apparently 'bit' hadn't been coined yet).

	Noel

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-08 18:20 Noel Chiappa
@ 2022-09-08 19:28 ` Jim Capp
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Jim Capp @ 2022-09-08 19:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Noel Chiappa; +Cc: tuhs

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See "The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer", by Maurice V. Wilkes, David J. Wheeler, and Stanley Gill, copyright 1951, 

pp. 5 section 1-4: "The store is divided into a number of registers or storage locations; the content of a storage location is a sequence of 0's and 1's, and may represent an order or a number. 


The term word is used for the content of a storage location if it is desired to refer to it without specifying whether it represents a number or an order." 


Jim 







From: "Noel Chiappa" <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> 
To: tuhs@tuhs.org 
Cc: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu 
Sent: Thursday, September 8, 2022 2:20:51 PM 
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits? 

> It was used, in the modern sense, in "Planning a Computer System", 
> Buchholz,1962. 

Also in the IBM "650 Manual of Operation", June, 1955. (Before I was 
born! :-) 

Noel 

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
@ 2022-09-08 18:20 Noel Chiappa
  2022-09-08 19:28 ` Jim Capp
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2022-09-08 18:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > It was used, in the modern sense, in "Planning a Computer System",
    > Buchholz,1962.

Also in the IBM "650 Manual of Operation", June, 1955. (Before I was
born! :-)

	Noel

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-08 16:51 [TUHS] " Jon Steinhart
  2022-09-08 16:56 ` [TUHS] " Andrew Hume
@ 2022-09-08 17:28 ` Dan Halbert
  2022-09-09  0:00   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Dan Halbert @ 2022-09-08 17:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1531 bytes --]

On 9/8/22 12:51, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> One of those questions for which there is no search engine incantation.
>
> Jon

The famous 1946 paper, "Preliminary discussion of the logical design of 
an electronic computing device",  by Arthur Burks,  Herman H. Goldstine, 
John von Neumann, contains this sentence. I have this paper in Computer 
Structures: Readings and Examples, by Bell and Newell, but it's also 
online in many forms

**

    *

    4. The memory organ

    * 4.1. Ideally one would desire an indefinitely large memory
    capacity such that any particular aggregate of 40 binary digits, or
    /word /(cf. 2.3), would be immediately available-i.e. in a time
    which is somewhat or considerably shorter than the operation time of
    a fast electronic multiplier.

I also looked in the Oxford English Dictionary for etymology. It has:

    *d.* /Computing/. A consecutive string of bits (now typically 16,
    32, or 64, but formerly fewer) that can be transferred and stored as
    a unit./machine word/: see /machine word/ n. at machine n. Compounds
    2 <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.bpl.org/view/Entry/111850#eid38480019>.

    1946 H. H. Goldstine & J. Von Neumann in J. von Neumann /Coll. Wks./
    (1963) V. 28   In ‘writing’ a word into the memory, it is similarly
    not only the time effectively consumed in ‘writing’ which matters,
    but also the time needed to ‘find’ the specified location in the memory.

    [plus newer citations]

Dan H



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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?
  2022-09-08 16:51 [TUHS] " Jon Steinhart
@ 2022-09-08 16:56 ` Andrew Hume
  2022-09-08 17:28 ` Dan Halbert
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Andrew Hume @ 2022-09-08 16:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jon Steinhart; +Cc: TUHS

i can’t find my copy of “pixel”, but i would guess he might mention that.

> On Sep 8, 2022, at 9:51 AM, Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:
> 
> One of those questions for which there is no search engine incantation.
> 
> Jon


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2022-09-16  5:56 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 26+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-09-11 13:30 [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits? Douglas McIlroy
2022-09-11 15:08 ` John Cowan
2022-09-11 15:30 ` Bakul Shah
2022-09-11 15:45   ` Paul Winalski
2022-09-11 16:20     ` Steve Nickolas
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-09-09 19:39 Nelson H. F. Beebe
2022-09-09 20:27 ` Bakul Shah
2022-09-09 21:12   ` Henry Bent
2022-09-09 21:44   ` Dave Horsfall
2022-09-09 18:46 Norman Wilson
2022-09-10  1:35 ` Paul Winalski
2022-09-09 17:26 Douglas McIlroy
2022-09-09  1:33 Douglas McIlroy
2022-09-09  2:12 ` Larry McVoy
2022-09-13 14:23   ` John Foust via TUHS
2022-09-09  2:45 ` George Michaelson
2022-09-16  5:55 ` Marc Donner
2022-09-08 21:16 Noel Chiappa
2022-09-08 21:24 ` Dan Halbert
2022-09-08 18:20 Noel Chiappa
2022-09-08 19:28 ` Jim Capp
2022-09-08 16:51 [TUHS] " Jon Steinhart
2022-09-08 16:56 ` [TUHS] " Andrew Hume
2022-09-08 17:28 ` Dan Halbert
2022-09-09  0:00   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2022-09-09 15:49     ` Paul Winalski
2022-09-09 18:44       ` Bakul Shah

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