[aidenn0]

> Why? Why aren't you use half-bytes also?

I actually use half-bytes when it makes sense; my language of choice has bit-vectors so I can use exactly the number of bits I desire.

> If all your pointers are 64-bit aligned, all your variables are 64-bit aligned and your processor isn't any faster processing 16-bit numbers - if it even have instructions to process those - than 64-bit numbers?

Maybe I have an array with at least 4 16-bit numbers? If I'm counting bits, then it already means I have a lot of numbers. If I have 2 billion numbers in the range [0,15] Then I can easily represent them in an array of 4 or 8 bit values, but will run into performance issues trying to do so (if I can at all) using a similar array of 64 bit values.