A 60-bit word is typically used for high-precision floating-point calculations; it can also store 10 6-bit characters.

Examples

The only widely-used computers with 60-bit words were produced by

Control Data Corporation Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...

(CDC), including the CDC 6000 series, the CDC 7600, and the CDC Cyber 70 and 170 series. Though the addressable unit was the 60-bit word, instructions were either 15 or 30 bits. Early design documents for the IBM 7030 Stretch tentatively specified its word length as 60 bits; the final design used 64.Werner Buchholz, "Memory Word Length"
STRETCH Memo no. 40
July 31, 1956, archived at the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

Emulator

Museum examples of 60-bit CDC machines exist. There also exists an emulator for the series which will simulate the CDC 60-bit machines on commodity hardware and operating systems.

References

{{CPU technologies Data unit Control Data Corporation hardware