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Octets calculation?

Peter Hansen peter at engcorp.com
Wed Jun 11 22:06:09 EDT 2003 
Erik Max Francis wrote:
> 
> Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> No, I'm referring to embedded systems where the smallest addressable
> unit really is 16 or 32 bits.  In those systems, a byte is larger than
> an octet.

I believe it's more common to call the smallest addressable unit
a "word" in embedded systems.  The PIC family, for example, has members
with a 14-bit word, and it would be unusual to hear it called a byte.
Maybe the convention with other chip families is different though.  I
usually work only with 8-bit word, 16-bit address range chips.

CDROMs apparently store 8-bit bytes using a 14-bit modulation scheme
which is called a "byte", however so it's probably going to get no 
one anywhere to argue about this.

-Peter
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