Byte addressing 8 bits; in fact, depending on the platform, byte sizes of 1 to 48 bits have been used in the past. Therefore, the term "octet" is used where the context makes byte-length ambiguous. For example, in the 1980s, Honeywell mainframes had 36-bit words, and were byte-addressable in 9-bit bytes, or "nonets", They used 7- or 8-bit character codes, either of which were stored one to each 9-bit byte, making characters individually addressable. To illustrate why byte addressing is useful, consider the IBM 7094, which is word-addressable and has no concept of a byte. It has 36-bit words, and stores its
Stochastic computing bit operation that can compute this function; the usual solution involves producing correlated output bits, which, as we have seen above, can cause a host of problems. Other functions (such as the averaging operator formula_25) require either stream decimation or inflation. Tradeoffs between precision and memory can be challenging. Although stochastic computing has a number of defects when considered as a method of general computation, there are certain applications that highlight its strengths. One notable case occurs in the decoding of certain error correcting codes. In developments unrelated to stochastic computing, highly effective methods of decoding LDPC codes using the