On 2025-09-30, Michael Stone <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 03:37:43PM -0000, Greg wrote: >>On 2025-09-29, Michael Stone <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>>I also believed there were actually two types of widths: the data bus >>>>width, and the CPU architecture width, and that the two didn't >>>>necessarily have to match. >>> >>> I have no idea what an "architecture width" is. As described in my >>> original message, you can describe an architecture in terms of the size >> >>Processor word size? > > "Processor word size of 64" is a longer way of saying "64 bit machine". > It has the complexities and nuances already discussed, and isn't as > useful a term as it was in the 50s or 60s. In many contexts "word" just > means "16 bits"! It may also mean a lot of other things--so many, that > the utility of the phrase is minimal without some specific context. >
I don't know. But this seems to mean something: In computing, a word is any processor design's natural unit of data. A word is a fixed-sized datum handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of the processor. The number of bits or digits[a] in a word (the word size, word width, or word length) is an important characteristic of any specific processor design or computer architecture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)
