Re: Identifying CPU and current OS
On 2025-09-30, Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 03:37:43PM -0000, Greg wrote:
>>On 2025-09-29, Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>I also believed there were actually two types of widths: the data bus
>>>>width, and the CPU architecture width, and that the two didn't
>>>>necessarily have to match.
>>>
>>> I have no idea what an "architecture width" is. As described in my
>>> original message, you can describe an architecture in terms of the size
>>
>>Processor word size?
>
> "Processor word size of 64" is a longer way of saying "64 bit machine".
> It has the complexities and nuances already discussed, and isn't as
> useful a term as it was in the 50s or 60s. In many contexts "word" just
> means "16 bits"! It may also mean a lot of other things--so many, that
> the utility of the phrase is minimal without some specific context.
>
I don't know. But this seems to mean something:
In computing, a word is any processor design's natural unit of data. A word is
a fixed-sized datum handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of
the processor. The number of bits or digits[a] in a word (the word size, word
width, or word length) is an important characteristic of any specific processor
design or computer architecture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)
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