Bytes with 128 bits?

[Manfred Nowak]

Regan Heath wrote

> Or am I missing the point entirely?

I post in the learn-group because do not know exactly what the point 
is.

At first glance it seems that the current hardware emulates bytes of 
size 8 bits on main memory with a granularity of 128 bits.

If this is true then a severe slowdown should happen by exceeding the 
128 bit boundary for consecutive accesses of 8 bit bytes---and 
algorithms as well as the compiler should take this into account.

-manfred