Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: BGB Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Byte Addressability And Beyond Date: Fri, 3 May 2024 22:11:44 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: <2024May3.171330@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Sat, 04 May 2024 05:11:46 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="6eaf0cac49f5cc050240488907bcd42c"; logging-data="1064598"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+ytFcjRg8lrhQhGo6L8lbBkVsubF4amBg=" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:iiijMqHltZJl/c7oxUwPL8uTlQU= Content-Language: en-US In-Reply-To: Bytes: 2330 On 5/3/2024 9:00 PM, John Levine wrote: > According to Lawrence D'Oliveiro : >>> Others have provided good answers for that. Here's another one: Given >>> the requirements (based on the predecessors), there was not reason to go >>> beyond byte addressing. And looking at history, this seems to have been >>> the right choice. >> >> That applied back in history, when we had fewer addressing bits to play >> with, what about now? > > What applications do you think would work better with bit addressing? > > I can think of some kinds of data compression that use variable sized > bit fields, and I suppose graphics rendering although these days it's > rare to find a display without at least 8 bits per pixel and in any > event, most displays have GPUs nearby to do the rendering. > Yeah, maybe data-compression, but then to be useful here, one would likely end up needing 4R and 5R instructions. Not likely worth it. Not a huge use-case in graphics, as noted, in most cases this is done with 16 or 32 bit pixels; and bit-plane graphics are long since dead. > Compare that to all the other stuff for which bit addressing would just > be extra baggage. Where's the benefit? > Basically agreed.