What’s the difference, and will we one day have 128bit systems?
In: Technology
The bits typically refer to the size of registers in a CPU. Registers are like buckets inside a CPU that hold an integer value. 8-bit computers could store an 8-bit value (0-255) in a register, 16-bit CPUs operated on 16-bits at a time (0-65535), 64 bit computers have 64-bit registers. Newer x86 CPUs already have (vector) registers that are 128, 256 or 512-bits so we’re beyond 128-bits already, but the CPU itself isn’t considered a 128-bit processor.
There’s a bit of fuzziness as some CPUs (x86) are backwards compatible, so a 64-bit x86 CPU can still use 64, 32, 16 and 8-bit registers. 8-bit computers could still do 64-bit math using carry operations.
8-bit CPUs were things like the 6502 (Super Nintendo, Commodore 64, Atari 2600). Intel 8086 (IBM PC) were 16-bit, Motorola 68000 (original Macintosh, Amiga) were mixed 16/32, ARM is 32-bit (but can do 16/8 as well), etc.
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