Carlos Rodrigues 🪣 on Nostr: As a kid, I didn't understand what exactly 8-bit vs. 16-bit vs. 32-bit meant, but I ...
As a kid, I didn't understand what exactly 8-bit vs. 16-bit vs. 32-bit meant, but I got the message that more bits were better.
As an adult, I understand those labels were arbitrary at best, if not misleading.
Today we kind of settled on address size – e.g. we take x86_64 to be 64-bit because it uses 64-bit addresses (even though its physical address width is less than that).
In the past, it might have been register size, data bus width, address bus width, ... 🤷♂️
1/4 🧵
#retrocomputing #cpu
Published at
2024-06-27 17:50:41Event JSON
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"content": "As a kid, I didn't understand what exactly 8-bit vs. 16-bit vs. 32-bit meant, but I got the message that more bits were better.\n\nAs an adult, I understand those labels were arbitrary at best, if not misleading.\n\nToday we kind of settled on address size – e.g. we take x86_64 to be 64-bit because it uses 64-bit addresses (even though its physical address width is less than that).\n\nIn the past, it might have been register size, data bus width, address bus width, ... 🤷♂️\n\n1/4 🧵\n\n#retrocomputing #cpu",
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