> And if you’re doing SIMD, your integer SIMD instructions can be 2 or 4x higher throughput than float32 if you can use int16 / int8 data.

Your float instructions can also be 2x the throughput if you use f16. With no need to go for specific divisors.

For values that even can pack into 8 bits, you rarely have a way to process enough at once to actually get more throughput than with wider numbers.

I'm sure there's a program where it very much matters, but my bet is on it not even mildly mattering, and there basically always being a hundred more useful optimizations to work on.