List of platforms supported by the C standard

Question

Does anyone know of any platforms supported by the C standard, for which there is still active development work, but which are:

• not 2's complement or
• the integer width is not 32 bits or 64 bits or
• some integer types have padding bits or
• if you worked on a 2's complement machine, the bit pattern with sign bit 1 and all value bits zero is not a valid negative number or
• integer conversion from signed to unsigned (and vice versa) is not via verbatim copying of bit patterns or
• right shift of integer is not arithmetic shift or
• the number of value bits in an unsigned type is not the number of value bits in the corresponding signed type + 1 or
• conversion from a wider int type to a smaller type is not by truncation of the left most bits which would not fit

EDIT: Alternatively, if there are platforms in the period 1995 to 1998 which influenced the C99 decision to include the above, but which were discontinued, I would be interested in them also.

EDIT: The C rationale has this to say about padding bits:

Padding bits are user-accessible in an unsigned integer type. For example, suppose a machine uses a pair of 16-bit shorts (each with its own sign bit) to make up a 32-bit int and the sign bit of the lower short is ignored when used in this 32-bit int. Then, as a 32-bit signed int, there is a padding bit (in the middle of the 32 bits) that is ignored in determining the value of the 32-bit signed int. But, if this 32-bit item is treated as a 32-bit unsigned int, then that padding bit is visible to the user’s program. The C committee was told that there is a machine that works this way, and that is one reason that padding bits were added to C99.

Footnotes 44 and 45 mention that parity bits might be padding bits. The committee does not know of any machines with user-accessible parity bits within an integer. Therefore, the committee is not aware of any machines that treat parity bits as padding bits.

So another question is, what is that machine which C99 mentioned?

EDIT: It seems that C99 was considering removing support for 1's complement and signed magnitude: http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n868.htm http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n873.htm (search for 6.2.6.2)

Answer 1

Even if these machines are ancient, there's still an active community programming for PDP-8, most but not all using simulations: PDP-8 as an example. And this machine, AFAIK, uses 12-bit integers!