6 May
2010
6 May
'10
11:15 p.m.
On 5/7/10 2:08 AM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Right. But is it 8 or 16?
Well specifically, people like us, who actually know how computers work.
> Well, the
8080 can't do a 16-bit by 16-bit multiply to get a 32-bit
> product, so that's an obvious difference.
So, therefore, we all agree that the 8080 is NOT a 32-bit processor! See,
it's not all that cut-and-dried. I think we need to defer to
what is "commonly accepted" amongst the learned. Everyone knows the
Who are the "learned"? Are the registers 16 bit registers that can be split
into two 8 bit?
or are they pairs of 8 bit registers that can be used together for 16 bit
values?
Is the size of the data bus irrelevant?
(There have been people who maintain that THAT is the measure of the
processor!)
The software of an 8088 looks like 16 bit; the hardware of an 8088 looks
an awful lot like 8 bit. There are people who consider the 8088 to be an
8-bit and consider the 8086 to be 15 bit, in spite of their
"similarities".
Yes, agreed 100% all around.
What do you consider 80386 to be?
By what measure? ;)
how about the 80386-SX? It's hardware seems
similar to 80286; what is
THAT?
Well that's an 80386 with a half-width data bus, much like the 8088
is an 8086 with a half-width data bus. So...by what measure? ;)
What the hell is a "Celeron"? or a
"Dragonball"? or an "Atom"?
Well the Celeron being a Pentium, conventional wisdom says "32-bit".
Dragonball is a CPU32-core processor, whose ALU is 32-bits wide. But
the Dragonball (at least the 68EZ328 variant, the last one I designed
with) has a 16-bit data bus! So...which is it? 16 or 32?
(sorry, I know zero about the Atom, can't comment there but would
welcome some knowledge)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL