And to think that processors started out at 4-bits, the Intel 4004, the first general purpose microprocessor. That didn’t last long as it quickly transitioned to 8-bits so that it could go from being a calculator to a text processor as conventional text is represented as an 8-bit number, even though only 7 bits are technically required.
After that, the processor word length depended more upon addressing limitations, as it went from 16-bits to 32-bits to, finally, 64-bits. Then it stopped. However, GPU’s have taken it to 128 bits and multiples thereof (no longer strictly powers of 2) such as 384 bits for the GeForce 4090, just for sheer data bandwidth.
I’m not a processor developer, so maybe I got somethings wrong.
And to think that processors started out at 4-bits, the Intel 4004, the first general purpose microprocessor. That didn’t last long as it quickly transitioned to 8-bits so that it could go from being a calculator to a text processor as conventional text is represented as an 8-bit number, even though only 7 bits are technically required.
After that, the processor word length depended more upon addressing limitations, as it went from 16-bits to 32-bits to, finally, 64-bits. Then it stopped. However, GPU’s have taken it to 128 bits and multiples thereof (no longer strictly powers of 2) such as 384 bits for the GeForce 4090, just for sheer data bandwidth.
I’m not a processor developer, so maybe I got somethings wrong.