Re: significance of bits

[Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 01, 1999 at 01:12:29PM -0500, SWAPS wrote:
> "K.Muralidharan" <murali@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > Can anyone tell me the significance of no of bits when people speak
> > about 32,64 bit sound cards,128 bit video cards,etc.As far as I know
> > barring the Alpha CPU, all are 32bit CPUs.

Incorrect. MIPS and Sparc have had 64 bit implementation for years.

In contemporary microprocessor architecture, the bitness of a CPU is
defined by the number of bits in the virtual address i.e. ability to
address a large amount of memory in one process/address space.

In short, if your pointers are 64 bits, your CPU is 64 bits. About other
components (peripherals etc), it's the size of data transferred from
the device to memory. The wider the data path, the faster the device, at
the same clock speed.

	-Arun



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