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From: pauls@nsc.nsc.com (Paul Sweazey)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Size of SysV "block" (really: byte != 8 bits)
Message-ID: <4503@nsc.nsc.com>
Date: Sun, 19-Jul-87 13:21:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.4503
Posted: Sun Jul 19 13:21:30 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Jul-87 21:07:04 EDT
References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <6705@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <524@ollie.UUCP>
Reply-To: pauls@nsc.UUCP (Paul Sweazey)
Organization: National Semiconductor, Sunnyvale
Lines: 25

In article <524@ollie.UUCP> hansen@mips.UUCP (Craig Hansen) writes:
>Has anyone seen a good name used for three 8-bit bytes? I've been using
>"tri-byte", but could see it being shortened to "trite" or "tryte."
>
>-- 
>Craig Hansen
>Manager, Architecture Development
>MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
>...decwrl!mips!hansen

The IEEE 896 Futurebus uses "quadlet" to refer to 32-bit quantities.  I have
no idea of the precise history.  The terms "triplet", "doublet", and
"singlet" (usually just "byte") naturally follow and are used also.

Since on a standard backplane bus it is inappropriate to mandate the
big- or little-endian structure of the data, there are simply four "lanes"
on the 32-bit data "highway".  It is therefore possible (and planned)
that modules may transfer non-adjacent bytes.  If the four byte-wide lanes
are labeled W, X, Y, and Z, what do we call a WY, WZ, WXZ, WYZ, etc?

Silly discussions attract more silly questions,

Paul Sweazey
Microprocessor Architecture Group
National Semiconductor Corporation