When is a word not a word?

[valerio bellizzomi]

I'm working on x86 from ages,
in x86 a Byte is a sequence of 8 bits,
a Word is a two bytes sequence (16 bits),
and a Nibble is the half of a byte (4 bits).

valerio


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 08/07/2000 at 19.59 Kragen Sitaker wrote:

>>From a.f.c, a rumor that x86 isn't the only architecture that calls a
>word something other than a word:
>
>Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
>Subject: Re: Is a VAX a mainframe?
>From: eugene@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya)
>Message-ID: <39667cfe$1@news.ucsc.edu>
>Date: 7 Jul 2000 17:59:42 -0800
>
>. . .
>There are little artifacts like a 16-bit entity on an Alpha is a "word"
>and a 64-bit entity is a Quad word. . . .