On 1/6/19 11:25 AM, Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk wrote:
I think it’s also telling that the IETF uses the term octet in all of
the specifications to refer to 8-bit sized data. As “byte” (from
older machines) could be anything and is thus somewhat ambiguous.
It *may* have been the IBM 360 that started the trend of Byte == 8-bits
as the 360’s memory (in IBM’s terms) was byte addressable and the
instructions for accessing them were “byte” instructions (as opposed
to half-word and word instructions).
Thank you for the clarification.
My take away is that before some nebulous point in time (circa IBM's
360) a "byte" could be a number of different bits, depending on the
computer being discussed. Conversely, after said nebulous point in time
a byte was standardized on 8-bits.
Is that fair and accurate enough? - I'm wanting to validate the patch
before I apply it to my mental model of things. ;-)
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
