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From: campbell@sauron.UUCP (Mark Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: what's a word
Message-ID: <795@sauron.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Dec-86 09:53:07 EST
Article-I.D.: sauron.795
Posted: Fri Dec 19 09:53:07 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Dec-86 08:36:12 EST
References: <112@bnr-vpa.UUCP> <9200002@rmi.UUCP> <193@drilex.UUCP> <7426@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: campbell@sauron.UUCP (Mark Campbell)
Organization: NCR Corp., Advanced System Development, Columbia, SC
Lines: 21

In article <7426@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> A word is the 'natural' unit of operations on a machine.
>> (Which means that 32 bits on a vax should really be called a word, not
>> a longword.)
>
>The only reason it's called a longword is because of all the semi-subliminal 
>it's-really-just-a-big-pdp11-so-don't-worry-about-incompatibility marketing
>horseshit that surrounded the vax in its early days.  Remember when a 780's
>official designation was a "VAX-11/780"?
>-- 
>				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry

[For what it's worth...]
A DEC field representitive in the late 70's told me that the reason that the
VAX word was 16 bits was that the Government classified machines by word
size when purchasing -- thus the VAX would have competed with a higher
class of machines in contracts.
-- 
						Mark Campbell
						{}!ncsu!ncrcae!sauron!campbell