> A byte is the smallest block of memory with an address. E.g you can't take the address of 7 combined bits on x86 but you can for 8. I think that's an anachro

> A byte is the smallest block of memory with an address. E.g you can't take the address of 7 combined bits on x86 but you can for 8. I think that's an anachronistic/incorrect usage. A lot of machines (including several with 36-bit words that you mentioned) supported larger basic addressable units of memory, but didn't call these larger units "bytes", and distinguished between "bytes" and "words". In fact, one of the elements of the early RISC philosophy was that CPU support for byte accesses (as opposed to word accesses) was extraneous, based on statistics gathered from real programs. Early MIPS/Alpha/etc. machines did not support byte addressing, but the people using them still called 8 bits a byte.