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.
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When it comes to “bits” it is the with of data and command lanes.
64 bit is NOT twice as big as 32 bit.
The number that 32 bit can represent is 2,147,483,647.
The number that 64 bit can represent is 18,446,744,073,709,551,615
There is no tangible improvement to go above 64bit, it can fit everything.
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128 bit is huge and you would need a lot more wiring and connections
The number is: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,455
Because currently it has no real use.
I try to ELI5
The Bits define 2 things
1. How much size a number gets when “saved”
2. How many adresses the processor can know.
Lets start out with 1.
If you have a character in a role play game with a current amount of HP, you need to save this number somewhere. This is typically done in the RAM. Now if the max HP in the game would be 100, you could easily store this number in 1 Byte ( 2^8 Bits) which equals a maximum number of 255. But in a 32 bit system if the developer creates a 1 Byte Variable (placeholder for that number) this also takes the whole space of the 32 bit away. This means that you have to find a good amount how much Bits your Processor needs to have for your system, because bigger waste means you need bigger hardware (e.g. more RAM) which means more expensive system.
2.:
Every number of 1 gets saved somewhere, and every number gets an address. You can see the numbers equal to houses built in one large street and the address is the house number. Now lets say the postal office wants to send a letter to one of the houses. In a 8 bit system the postal office would have a small folder with adresses with only 255 pages. Everything that comes after this is basically invisible to the post office. Then they upgraded to 16 bit to be able to send letters to more adresses. This has been done with 32 bit and 64 bit again. If you calculate how much RAM you can have at maximum with 32 bit (2^32) you see that this is only 4GByte. This is nothing nowadays. Now calculate this again with 64 bit and you will see this will last long time.
When humanity finds a way to get incredibly much space for a cheap price, the next step will come amd we will jump to 128 Bits.
Because these days virtually all consoles have parts that are 128bit. Some parts even more. If memory serves correctly the amd chips in xbox/ps5 is 256bits for parts of the gpu.
Some parts help speed up moving data, some help calculations.
The ps2 had some extra micro(one was micro and macro) processors. They were entirely 128bit. But this is a bit of trickery. It allowed you to add/sub etc 4 decimal numbers at once for 3d calculations for example.
Early console “bitness” was in reference to [color depth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth), and not instruction size, the 32 or 64 that you see associated with processors on computers. The consoles themselves used 32-bit processors.
The color depth was important as it was the limit on how detailed character and resource sprites could be, and then textures later. This was during a time when memory and storage were relatively expensive and thus restrictive.
It’s not even an afterthought today, as memory and storage are cheap and abundant.
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