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From: Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Short Vectors Versus Long Vectors
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2024 11:30:29 -0000 (UTC)
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BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> schrieb:

> Say, seemingly no one built an 8/16 bit mainframe,

The IBM 360/30 and 360/40 actually had a 8 and 16-bit
microarchitecture, respectively.  Of course, they hid it cleverly
behind the user-visible architecture which was 32 bits.

But then, the Nova was a 4-bit system cleverly disguising itself
as a 16-bit system, and the Z80 had a 4-bit ALU, as well.

> or say using 24-bit 
> floats (Say: S.E7.F16) rather than bigger formats, ...

Konrad Zuse used 22-bit floats.

> Like, seemingly, the smallest point of computers was seemingly things 
> like the 6502 and similar...

That was probably the PDP 8/S, which had (if Wikipedia is to be
believed) around 519 logic gates.  The 6502 had more.