Every now and then, someone on SO points out that char (aka 'byte') isn't necessarily 8 bits.

It seems that 8-bit char is almost universal. I would have thought that for mainstream platforms, it is necessary to have an 8-bit char to ensure its viability in the marketplace.

Both now and historically, what platforms use a char that is not 8 bits, and why would they differ from the "normal" 8 bits?

When writing code, and thinking about cross-platform support (e.g. for general-use libraries), what sort of consideration is it worth giving to platforms with non-8-bit char?

In the past I've come across some Analog Devices DSPs for which char is 16 bits. DSPs are a bit of a niche architecture I suppose. (Then again, at the time hand-coded assembler easily beat what the available C compilers could do, so I didn't really get much experience with C on that platform.)