48-bit computers
From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: 48-bit computers Date: 11 Mar 91 13:20:37 GMT Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA In article <13272@darkstar.ucsc.edu> haynes@felix.ucsc.edu (99700000) writes: >Also 48 is a nice number for packing all kinds of bytes and nibbles into, >since it has so many divisors. I spoze that's less important now that >the price of memory has gone down so much compared to 1964. Indeed it was. Here is one list, from the KDF9 programming manual, p 24: THE KDF9 WORD HAS 48 BITS ... IT MAY BE USED AS... Eight 6-Bit Alpha-Numeric Characters One 48-Bit Fixed-Point Number Two 24-Bit (Half length) Fixed-Point Numbers Half of a 96-Bit (Double Length) Fixed-Point Number One 48-Bit Floating-Point Number Two 24-Bit (Half length) Floating-Point Numbers Half of a 96-Bit (Double length) Floating-Point Number Three 16-Bit (Fixed point) Integers Six 8-Bit Instruction Syllables An instruction was 1, 2 or 3 syllables; an address was 15 bits. O, memory! We shall not see its like again.