15 Sep
2016
15 Sep
'16
12:34 p.m.
On 09/15/2016 11:38 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
Hence my comment. It's a matter of what to believe--Motorola or your
lyin' eyes. :)
Clearly, external bus size doesn't mean much in this discussion. Take
the NS32K series--from the -008 to the -032, all basically the same
internally. For what it's worth, WikiP refers to them as the "first
general-purpose 32-bit microcomputer".
There have been a great many bit-serial computers in history,but I've
never heard them called "one bit" architectures. Register length is
similarly no indication as internal registers can be any length and
"visible" registers may not exist at all.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it
means just what I choose it to mean ? neither more nor less.'
--Chuck
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.