Does it make the computer faster? And how are they different from 8 and 16-bit video game consoles?
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It doesn’t impact the speed directly. That’s the processor’s job. But the processor uses those bits.
An analogy might be: you’re in your kitchen and you know where stuff is. That’s the silverware drawer, pots are over there, etc. You are the processor and knowing where stuff is in your single family kitchen is 32 bits. Now imagine moving into a huge restaurant kitchen. It has the same basic stuff and you could still cook for your family, but until you can find all the stuff in the bigger kitchen you can’t cook for 20 families at once. That’s 64 bits.
The bigger kitchen is the amount of RAM, or memory (not storage), in the computer.
When we had 8b, we only had a hotel microwave and a mini fridge to figure out. 8b was plenty. 16b era we had a kitchenette, 32b era we had a normal kitchen, etc. Note: the number of bits is just being able to find things (address them). We had 8b because we didn’t need to find a lot of stuff in the hotel mini fridge… these days we have a massive kitchen (32GB+ of memory!) and the ability to remember where a tremendous amount of stuff is in that kitchen (I know where those tongs are!).
Recently we’ve been upgrading the processor to handle all the “families” (threads) that we can cook for at once, too. Theoretically that will make things more efficient, but in any good kitchen, timing is critical. There’s a lot to it. But maybe this helps.
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