CDC 6600 - Why so awesome?

[Swift Griggs]

On Tue, 21 Jun 2016, Rich Alderson wrote:
> > - It used odd sized (by todays standards) register, instruction, and bus 
> >   sizes. 60 bit machine with 15/30 bit instructions. But, didn't it cause 
> >   a bunch of alignment issues for you ?
> ???  Alignment issues?  Care to define this?  Are you thinking of bytes?

Exactly, yes. I was thinking that 60 bits is not divisble by 8. However, 
as I said, I'm a total ignoramous about the platform. 

> The word is [...] ... packed into the 60-bit word.
> Where would you see alignment issues?

Well, as you so eloquently explain, as long as the units feeding into the 
registers are factors of the register's total size, it's not a problem. 
So, it sounds like it wasn't an issue. I didn't know of any actual issue, 
I was just curious.

-Swift