4 Nov
1997
4 Nov
'97
7:42 a.m.
Tim Hotze wrote:
I think some of you have misinterpreted Tony's question. He was asking
about word lengths. I do not believe that the Texas 99 series had a
word length of 9 bits (16 wasn't it?)
The Intel 8088 was 8 bits, the 8086 16; the 80x87, as I recall, are 80
bits internally (another one for your list, Tony, if coprocessors
count!)
I believe that there are some CPU chips now with 64-bit internal buses.
Any advance on 64?
At the other end, do the processors in the AMT DAP count as 1-bit
machines? Or are they bit-slices of a 32 bit machine? Or a 1024 bit
machine?
Philip.
Also, 88 (8088), 87 (487, 8087, etc.) and many other
numbers. With macs,
there's a whole slew of numbers that I don't want to get into.
Riccardo quoted Tony Duel as having written:
Which reminds
me. Which word lengths have been used by (binary) computers?
Off the top of my head :
4 (Intel 4004, etc)
8 (Far too many to list)
12 (PDP8, PDP12, etc)
..omissis...
What others?
9 (Texas 99/4, 990/10, TMS 9900)
86 (Intel Docet again) 
4 Nov
4 Nov
8:35 a.m.
On Tue, 4 Nov 1997 Philip.Belben(a)powertech.co.uk wrote:
The Intel 8088 was 8 bits, the 8086 16; the 80x87, as
I recall, are 80
bits internally (another one for your list, Tony, if coprocessors
count!)
If coprocessors count, we can trivially get 64 bits (a lot of the old DEC
PDP11 coprocessors were that sort of size).
Of course instruction and data words don't have to be the same size. Some
of the PIC microcontrollers have 8bit data and 14 bit instructions
I believe that there are some CPU chips now with 64-bit internal buses.
Any advance on 64?
The HP saturn has 64 bit registers (and a 4 bit bus...)
At the other end, do the processors in the AMT DAP count as 1-bit
machines? Or are they bit-slices of a 32 bit machine? Or a 1024 bit
machine?
11:13 a.m.
On Tue, 4 Nov 1997, Tony Duell wrote:
Of course instruction and data words don't have to
be the same size. Some
of the PIC microcontrollers have 8bit data and 14 bit instructions
Likewise, the GI 1600 (used in the Intellivision, among other things) has
16-bit data words and 10-bit instructions. Apparently, the Intellivision
designers didn't want to waste 6 bits of ROM for each instruction to gain
the benefit of being able to store 16-bit data, so Intellivision ROM
cartridges are only 10 bits wide.
--
Scott Ware s-ware(a)nwu.edu
8 Nov
8 Nov
1:04 a.m.
Philip.Belben(a)powertech.co.uk wrote:
I believe that there are some CPU chips now with 64-bit internal buses.
Any advance on 64?
Well I believe the HP 85 had a HP propietary CPU with 64 bits
internal
running at 613 KHz
------------------------------------------------------------
Francois Auradon
Visit the Sanctuary at: http://home.att.net/~francois.auradon
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ard＠odin.phy.bris.ac.uk -
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Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk -
ware＠xtal.pharm.nwu.edu