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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
OK SO with computers we talk about their bitness a lot. Like the C64 is an 8bit computer, the SNES is 16bit, the 386 PCs were 32bit, and modern PCs and phones are 64bit, right?
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
and what that means is... complicated. Because often it's called "bus width" which is rarely accurate. The idea of it being bus width means the CPU talks to the memory in chunks of that size. 8-bit CPUs talk to ram in 8-bit chunks, right?
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
the other meaning is that it's the "word size" of the processor. Like, the registers and math done on an 8-bit CPU are 8-bit, and 32bit on a 32-bit CPU. MAKES SENSE?
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
and you can see how that works on a processor like the 6502. It's an 8-bit processor, it talks to memory in 8-bit chunks, and it has three registers: A, X, & Y which are all 8-bit
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
it's also got S, the stack pointer, which is 8-bit, and PC, the program counter, which is 16bit WAIT
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
and the answer is basically "uhh, it's not that simple". Even 8-bit CPUs need to do 16-bit math sometimes and address things with 16-bit address, so the program counter is 16-bit
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
but maybe this is a rare case of a weird design from the dawn of Computer Time and it all makes simple sense from then on. I doubt it, but maybe.
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