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From: glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.math,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.pl1,comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: KISS4691, a potentially top-ranked RNG.
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:41:24 +0000 (UTC)
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Date: 2011-04-29T17:41:24+00:00
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In comp.lang.fortran Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> wrote:

(snip, I wrote)
>> No.  You need CHAR_BIT to tell how many bits are in a char.
>> It has been known to get to 64 on word addressed 64 bit machines.
>> It must be at least 8, but can be more.
 
> Certainly CHAR_BIT *could* be 64 (or even more), but I've never heard
> of a 64-bit system with CHAR_BIT==64.  Such an implementation would
> have trouble dealing with octet-oriented data from other systems.
> Some DSPs (digital signal processors) do have CHAR_BIT > 8.
> There have been systems with, for example, 9-bit bytes, but they
> had pretty much become obsolete by the time C was standardized.

The story I remember was for a Cray machine, but I never used
one to check on it.  I do know that there are some 64 bit
word addressed machines, especially some from Cray.

-- glen