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.
