[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2012-08-24 00:10, ChrisQ wrote:
> On 08/23/12 17:55, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
>>
>> However, a byte does not necessarily imply 8 bits...
>>
>> Johnny
>>
>
> Agreed, but for example, let's choose 12 or 16 bits as the file system
> interface wordsize. If you want to store bytes, which are very common
> in computing, you either agree to loose 4 or 8 bits per transaction,
> which is wastefull of disk space, or the calling application has to
> laboriously pack and unpack the data before writing or reading it, which
> reduces performance. Both are less than ideal for different reasons.
> To optimise the interface, it needs to made as usefull as possible to
> the widest number of potential users, with perhaps some bias towards
> the most common format used.

Or else I use 12 or 16 bit bytes...? :-)
You are (again) in the text assuming that a byte is 8 bits.

Having anything use 8-bit bytes on a PDP-8 is extremely inefficient.

> Like everything though, all engineering design is a compromise and can
> never satisfy all needs at once :-)...

No argument there...

	Johnny