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From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe@math.utah.edu>
To: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in        collection of bits?
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2022 13:39:14 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CMM.0.96.0.1662752354.beebe@gamma.math.utah.edu> (raw)

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/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

             reply	other threads:[~2022-09-09 19:39 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 27+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-09-09 19:39 Nelson H. F. Beebe [this message]
2022-09-09 20:27 ` Bakul Shah
2022-09-09 21:12   ` Henry Bent
2022-09-09 21:44   ` Dave Horsfall
2022-09-10  1:49     ` [TUHS] Obscene languages (was: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
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
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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