OK, the web is your friend. Looks like it has applications in cryptography, or searching thru text:
https://cryptome.org/jya/sadd.htm ________________________________ From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2022 11:28 AM To: Randy Dawson via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Cc: Chuck Guzis <ccl...@sydex.com> Subject: [cctalk] Re: Minicomputer front panel. On 9/23/22 11:14, Randy Dawson via cctalk wrote: > On the top secret number cruching.... > > The Cray had an instruction called 'population count' > > asked for by the NSA. > > The number of bits on in a word, not sure what this was used for. The CDC 6600 had a dedicated functional unit for this instruction. Wasted a lot of time trying to think up practical uses for it--totting up disk block allocation bitmaps was perhaps the most useful. --Chuck
