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We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

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Re: We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

#241

Post by jacquesm »

xpe wrote: post #153
jacquesm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really wasn't well written. I contains factual errors that stand out like lighthouses showing the author had an idea about an article but doesn't actually know the material.

> I contains (sic) factual errors that stand out like lighthouses showing the author had an idea about an article but doesn't actually know the material. Whoops ^ To be fair, technically, I also contain some factual errors, if you consider the rare genetic mutation or botched DNA transcription. So far, I haven't found anything that I would consider to be a glaring factual error. What did I miss? I'm not talking merel…

Sorry about that 't'. It was (very) late.

Re: We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

#242

Post by deafpolygon »

JdeBP wrote: post #126
zamadatix wrote: post #4

Because we have 8 bit bytes we are familiar with the famous or obvious cases multiples-of-8-bits ran out, and those cases sound a lot better with 12.5% extra bits. What's harder to see in this kind of thought experiment is what the famously obvious cases multiples-of-9-bits ran out would have been. The article starts to think about some of these towards the end, but it's hard as it's not immediately obvious how many…

LLM dren also isn't going to provide anything on how wildly different the home computer revolution would have been with twice as big character ROMs; the personal computer revolution would have been with twice as big code pages 437, 850, and 1252 and an extra CGA attribute bit; the BBS era would have been with 9N1 telecommunications; ECMA-48 and ECMA-35 would have been with space for the C1 control characters with no…

I'm curious what would have happened with gaming.. would we have gotten the NES?

Re: We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

#244

Post by miyuru »

dmitrygr wrote: post #129
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run IPv6 on both corporate and home networks. Whether or not the additions were merited, they are not a formidable challenge for any reasonably-skilled admin. So no, I don't think that the reason you gave suffices as an excuse for why so many still refuse to deploy IPv6.

I'll assume you are speaking in good faith, so i'll reply so as well: I do not want to be a "reasonably-skilled admin". Not my job nor desire. I want DHCP to work and NAT to exist which acts as a de-facto firewall and hides my internal network config from the outside world. All with zero or fewer clicks in my home router's config. With IPv4 this works. With IPv6 it does not. Simple choice for me then: find the IPv6 c…

> I do not want to be a "reasonably-skilled admin" > NAT to exist which acts as a de-facto firewall

My option is you should not handle router config at all and leave it to the ISP.

Re: We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

#245

Post by kazinator »

zozbot234 wrote: post #225
kazinator wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want the main function to be: int32_t main(int32_t argc, char **argv)? How about struct tm? struct tm {$ int32_t tm_sec; /* Seconds (0-60) */$ int32_t tm_min; /* Minutes (0-59) */$ int32_t tm_hour; /* Hours (0-23) */$ int32_t tm_mday; /* Day of the month (1-31) */$ int32_t tm_mon; /* Month (0-11) */$ int32_t tm_year; /* Year - 1900 */$ int32_t tm_wday; /* Day of the week (0-6, Sunday = 0) */$ int32_t tm_yda…

You'd define architecture-specific typedefs to deal with these cases in a portable way. The C standard already has types like int_fast8_t that are similar in principle.

See, why would you need an "architecture specific typedef" in order to represent the day of the month, or the number of arguments in main "in a portable way". int does it in a portable way already.

It's just muddled thinking.

Re: We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

#247

Post by IshKebab »

Tor3 wrote: post #235
calebh wrote: post #187

Perhaps the reason modern programs use so much memory vs what I remember from the Windows XP era is precisely because we went to 64 bits. Imagine how many pointers are used in the average program. When we switched over to 64 bits, the memory used by all those pointers instantly doubled. It's clear that 32 bits wasn't enough, but maybe some intermediate number between 32 and 64 would have added sufficient capacity wit…

SGI used three ABIs for their 64-bit computers.. O32, N32, N64. N32 was 64-bit except for pointers which were still 32 bits for exactly that reason - to avoid doubling the memory needed for storing pointers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI

Re: We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

#248

Post by IshKebab »

frutiger wrote: post #196
calebh wrote: post #187

Perhaps the reason modern programs use so much memory vs what I remember from the Windows XP era is precisely because we went to 64 bits. Imagine how many pointers are used in the average program. When we switched over to 64 bits, the memory used by all those pointers instantly doubled. It's clear that 32 bits wasn't enough, but maybe some intermediate number between 32 and 64 would have added sufficient capacity wit…

Because of aligned reads any pointer size between 32-bit and 64-bit would end up using 64-bits anyway.

With 8-bit bytes, yes.

Re: We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

#249

Post by MindSpunk »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #203
cchance wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not 10 bit bytes and 40 bit addresses and nice 2 based metric based measures :)

If something is painful you aren't doing it often enough, right? So my (completely uninformed) idea would be 27 bit addresses that are only routable on the local LAN and then a second optional 27 bit address to route between LANs on the WAN. The effective 54 bit address space would have been more than large enough, and if you support modularly extending addresses like that then there's no reason not to keep going bey…

That's very loosely how IPv6 works. Your ISP will typically assign your router a prefix and will route any address starting with that 56 or 64 bit prefix to you. Then devices on your network pick the remaining bits and they get their full address.

Re: We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes

#250

Post by layer8 »

theultdev wrote: post #194
layer8 wrote: post #115

It would also make Base64 a bit simpler (pun intended), at the cost of a little more overhead (50% instead of 33%).

> a little more overhead (50% instead of 33%) a little ?

A 12.5% increase, or 1/8. Yes, a little. Compared to, say, hexadecimal, which would be a 50% increase. Or URL percent-encoding, which would be a 125% increase.
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