Does it make the computer faster? And how are they different from 8 and 16-bit video game consoles?
In: 2446
The easiest way I can think of:
Imagine a word 16 letters, 32 letters and a word 64 letters long. you can write way more “words” with 64 letters!
every “combination” of letters, every word, is referring to a box with something inside.
with 64 letters long words, you have waaay more boxes.
those bits are exactly that: the size of the address of every memory section.
If you have longer addresses, you can address a lot more memory.
And that’s also the size of the “containers” in the CPU, where a single data can be stored. that’s way oversimplified
>Does it make the computer faster
now, talking about performance: is it better with more bits? yes.. and no. if you have very specific applications (mathematical calculations, games etc…) it will improve performance.
for standard applications, no, it won’t.
Well, except you can have more total memory. So it will increase overall performance of the system.
16 bits can address 64KB of RAM
32 bits can address 4GB of RAM (3.3 actually, for strange limitations)
64 bits.. well.. A LOT of RAM.
And having bigger container in the CPU can perform two mathematical calculations at one time.
>how are they different from 8 and 16-bit video game consoles
That’s similar. those terms were the length of the data used by the graphical chip. let’s say “the box content” in the prev. example. Why Nintendo choose this? IDK
EDIT: better console explanation
Latest Answers