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C++ proposal: There are exactly 8 bits in a byte

(www.open-std.org)
182 points Twirrim | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 22:21 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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throwaway889900 ◴[17 Oct 24 23:18 UTC] No.41874794[source]▶
But how many bytes are there in a word?
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wvenable ◴[17 Oct 24 23:27 UTC] No.41874838[source]▶
"Word" is an outdated concept we should try to get rid of.
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BlueTemplar ◴[17 Oct 24 23:38 UTC] No.41874933[source]▶
How exactly ? How else do you suggest CPUs do addressing ?

Or are you suggesting to increase the size of a byte until it's the same size as a word, and merge both concepts ?

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1. wvenable ◴[17 Oct 24 23:43 UTC] No.41874963[source]▶
I'm saying the term "Word" abstracting the number of bytes a CPU can process in a single operation is an outdated concept. We don't really talk about word-sized values anymore. Instead we mostly explicit on the size of value in bits. Even the idea of a CPU having just one relevant word size is a bit outdated.