G
Gary H
Flightless Bird
On Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:13:23 -0400, "Joe Morris"
<j.c.morris@verizon.net> wrote:
[snip]
>And "data width" is but one of the characteristics measured by bit count; I
>would argue that the more significant architectural metric is the address
>bus width, where 64-bit systems have the ability to utilize more than the
>(nominal) limit of 4 GB of physical memory. (64-bit operating systems don't
>necessarily have the ability to use the entire 64 bit bus; Windows 7, for
>example, can use up to 192 GB in the Professional/Ultimate/Enterprise
>versions.)
>
That would be "address width", not "data width". There are very
different things.
BTW, I've spent a lot of time programming computers with 8-bit data
width and 16-bit address width. The 8088 used in early "IBM clones"
had 16-bit data width and 20-bit address width.
>Joe Morris
>
<j.c.morris@verizon.net> wrote:
[snip]
>And "data width" is but one of the characteristics measured by bit count; I
>would argue that the more significant architectural metric is the address
>bus width, where 64-bit systems have the ability to utilize more than the
>(nominal) limit of 4 GB of physical memory. (64-bit operating systems don't
>necessarily have the ability to use the entire 64 bit bus; Windows 7, for
>example, can use up to 192 GB in the Professional/Ultimate/Enterprise
>versions.)
>
That would be "address width", not "data width". There are very
different things.
BTW, I've spent a lot of time programming computers with 8-bit data
width and 16-bit address width. The 8088 used in early "IBM clones"
had 16-bit data width and 20-bit address width.
>Joe Morris
>