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

(www.open-std.org)
288 points Twirrim | 3 comments | 17 Oct 24 22:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.478s | source
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pjdesno ◴[17 Oct 24 23:31 UTC] No.41874875[source]▶
During an internship in 1986 I wrote C code for a machine with 10-bit bytes, the BBN C/70. It was a horrible experience, and the existence of the machine in the first place was due to a cosmic accident of the negative kind.
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1. aldanor ◴[18 Oct 24 02:00 UTC] No.41875733[source]▶
10-bit arithmetics are actually not uncommon on fpgas these days and are used in production in relatively modern applications.

10-bit C, however, ..........

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2. eulgro ◴[18 Oct 24 02:11 UTC] No.41875796[source]▶
How so? Arithmetic on FPGA usually use the minimum size that works, because any size over that will use more resources than needed.

9-bit bytes are pretty common in block RAM though, with the extra bit being used for either for ECC or user storage.

3. loup-vaillant ◴[18 Oct 24 11:36 UTC] No.41878419[source]▶
10-bit C might be close to non-existent, but I've heard that quite a few DSP are word addressed. In practice this means their "bytes" are 32 bits.

  sizeof(uint32_t) == 1