Tim Peters
Agencies we can't talk about would like them as big as they can get them. Each vector register in a Cray box actually consisted of 64 64-bit words, or 4K bits per register. Some "special" models were constructed where the vector FPU was thrown away and additional bit-fiddling units added in its place: they really treated the vector registers as giant bitstrings, and didn't want to burn 64 clock cycles just to do, e.g., "one" conceptual xor.
You've got a point...but I don't think it's really economical to build that kind of hardware into general-purpose processors. You end up with a camel. You know, a horse designed by committee? -- <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form. -- Roy Innis, president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1988