Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!ptsfa!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucdcsb!robison
From: robison@uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: *Why* do modern machines mostly hav
Message-ID: <165100011@uiucdcsb>
Date: Sat, 25-Jul-87 21:05:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.165100011
Posted: Sat Jul 25 21:05:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jul-87 20:47:31 EDT
References: <2807@phri.UUCP>
Lines: 10
Nf-ID: #R:phri.UUCP:2807:uiucdcsb:165100011:000:495
Nf-From: uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu!robison    Jul 25 20:05:00 1987


Actually the Burroughs machines have a 51-bit word, 48 bits + a three bit tag.
The real tragedy is that their ALGOL does not support packed record structures,
so the programmers (including myself) have to specify how to pack information 
into words.  All that ``high-level'' ALGOL is unfortunately very dependent 
upon a 48-bit word-size and thus extremely non-portable.  In my experience
with the Burroughs systems and many C boxes, a well written C program is 
less machine dependent!

- Arch