What would be the benefit? Modern processors handle (what appear as) octet-based memory (despite having 64-bit words) all the time with no issues. In fact, your

What would be the benefit? Modern processors handle (what appear as) octet-based memory (despite having 64-bit words) all the time with no issues. In fact, your processor may only work on, say, 128-bit (16 byte cache line) memory accesses at a time. But if you insist, TI has some DSPs where CHAR_BITS is 16. They're supposedly a massive pain to use because you have to mask off the upper octet every so often.