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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: 0.205s | source
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donatj ◴[17 Oct 24 23:55 UTC] No.41875031[source]▶
So please do excuse my ignorance, but is there a "logic" related reason other than hardware cost limitations ala "8 was cheaper than 10 for the same number of memory addresses" that bytes are 8 bits instead of 10? Genuinely curious, as a high-level dev of twenty years, I don't know why 8 was selected.

To my naive eye, It seems like moving to 10 bits per byte would be both logical and make learning the trade just a little bit easier?

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dplavery92 ◴[17 Oct 24 23:56 UTC] No.41875041[source]▶
Eight is a nice power of two.
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donatj ◴[18 Oct 24 00:01 UTC] No.41875063[source]▶
Can you explain how that's helpful? I'm not being obtuse, I just don't follow
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1. davemp ◴[18 Oct 24 01:07 UTC] No.41875462[source]▶
Many circuits have ceil(log_2(N_bits)) scaling wrt to propagation delay/other dimensions so you’re just leaving efficiency on the table if you aren’t using a power of 2 for your bit size.