15 Sep
2016
15 Sep
'16
2:57 p.m.
On 2016-09-15 2:38 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
GPR width, being the visible programmer model, is the most common and
convenient definition of "architecture" I've come across. But there's no
reason we can't just say the *visible* architecture is 32 bit (which it
is), but the "internal" architecture is sort of 16.
Why not have two concepts? They're free. Gordon Bell probably laid this
out somewhere. Or Blaauw and Brooks.
--Toby
From: Chuck
Guzis
Call it anything you want, but we know what
Motorola called it.
The _first implementation_ may have been 16-bit, but I am in no doubt
whatsover (having written a lot of assembler code for the 68K family)
that the _architecture_ was 32-bit:
- 32-bit registers
- many operations (arithmetical, logical, etc) defined for that length
- 32-bit addresses
Etc, etc, etc, etc.
Noel