25 Oct
2010
25 Oct
'10
2:14 p.m.
More to the point, what sense did a 32-bit machine
make prior to 8-
bit character codes (e.g. EBCDIC)? ?24 36, 48 and 60 bit machines
made much more sense with 6 bit character codes. ?All of the above
word lengths are divisble by 6 and 4, so BCD isn't an issue either.
IBM did a study at the start of the 1960s and found that most data out
in the real world was financial records made of mostly BCD, and having
a word length of 32 bits made a great deal of sense, both in storing
and moving data. I think Amdahl originally wanted the S/360 to be
based on a six bit character, but lost the argument to the study.
--
Will