Why did the console bit wars end? During the 32 bit era, PS1 and Saturn were 32 bit systems, and Nintendo was boasting about having a 64 bit system. The last time console makers boasted about bits in their system was the sixth generation, with the Dreamcast, GameCube, and PS2 being 128 bits.

Question

Why didn’t the bit war continue into the seventh generation? Why didn’t the amount of bits double to 256 bits like they did in past generations? Any insight into this would be appreciated.

In: 609

Answer 1

The bit tells you how much RAM each processor can use at once. 16 bit = 64 kb, 32 bit = 4 GB, and 64 bit = 16 EB. That’s exabyte or one billion gigabytes. A ps5 has 16 GB or a billionth of the 64 bit limit and until you pass that 16 EB limit a 64 bit processor is effectively the same performance as a 128 bit processor, or a 256 bit one, or a 512 bit one.

The funny thing is there’s a decent chance we will
never need to meaningfully use 128 bit processors at all. Also the next step above that, a 256 bit processor, could potentially use enough memory to index just shy of every atom in the universe at once.