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Octets calculation?

Grant Edwards grante at visi.com
Thu Jun 12 10:31:58 EDT 2003 
In article <mailman.1055369063.13758.python-list at python.org>, Skip Montanaro wrote:

>     >> In the real world, nobody ever uses it to mean anything other than 8
>     >> bits.
> 
>     Erik> That's simply not true.  Take embedded systems, for examples,
>     Erik> where it's not at all uncommon for a byte to be 16 or 32 bits.
> 
> It's not uncommon for a machine word to be 16 or 32 bits, but it's rare
> these days for a byte to be anything other than 8 bits.

It's not rare in the DSP world.  TI's line of FP DSPs all had
32-bit bytes.  Where "byte" is used in the sense of the "C"
standard as the smallest unite of addressable memory.  There
are quite a few integer DSPs with 16 and 24 bit "bytes".

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I just got my PRINCE
                                  at               bumper sticker... But now I
                               visi.com            can't remember WHO he is...
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