<The Intel 8088 was 8 bits, the 8086 16; the 80x87, as I recall, are 80
<bits internally (another one for your list, Tony, if coprocessors
Generally there are several parameters instruction word size, largest data
word size, internal bus size and external bus size. Some are archtectually
decided.
The 8088 was 16 bit. What you have is instruction size (8bit!), register
size(16bit) and databus size(8 or 16). the 8088 and 8086 are the identical
processor save for the data bus is 8bits on the 8088 as small systems
economy vs speed measure. The processor assembles the bytes as needed
internally. Advanatage of an 8bit bus is cost and the expense of some
speed. Motorola did that with the 6800x, it was internally 32bit, but
available as 8/16 bit bus and sold as a 16 bit processor.
<I believe that there are some CPU chips now with 64-bit internal buses.
<Any advance on 64?
Alpha early was external 64bit and later external 128bit but the register
structure is 64bit.
<At the other end, do the processors in the AMT DAP count as 1-bit
<machines? Or are they bit-slices of a 32 bit machine? Or a 1024 bit
<machine?
Unknown here.
Allison
Received on Tue Nov 04 1997 - 10:04:51 GMT