Sorry to have such a mundane question - but I'm thoroughly confused!
I'm doing A+ at present and we've been shown an enormous table, comparing processors from as far back as 8088 to present day. There are columns for various bus widths, voltages, nm technology etc.
I asked the tutor what actually defines a 32-bit processor or a 64-bit processor and expected him to say something simple like: "it's the width of the X bus which defines this". Unfortunately, he didn't, but offered the explanation that ALL buses (system, data, address, PCI etc.) must be 64-bit wide for the processor to be categorised as 64-bit, otherwise it would be defined as 32-bit (unless just one of the buses was less than 32, in which case it might be a 16 or 20-bit processor). Is that correct? I was under the impression that address buses go up to 36-bit (allowing an address space of 2^36).
I've looked around, using everyone's friend (!) and there doesn't seem to be a nice, logical table giving all the relevant data that I'll need for the course and exam. I hope I don't have to remember the massive list that we were shown in the classroom!
I'm doing A+ at present and we've been shown an enormous table, comparing processors from as far back as 8088 to present day. There are columns for various bus widths, voltages, nm technology etc.
I asked the tutor what actually defines a 32-bit processor or a 64-bit processor and expected him to say something simple like: "it's the width of the X bus which defines this". Unfortunately, he didn't, but offered the explanation that ALL buses (system, data, address, PCI etc.) must be 64-bit wide for the processor to be categorised as 64-bit, otherwise it would be defined as 32-bit (unless just one of the buses was less than 32, in which case it might be a 16 or 20-bit processor). Is that correct? I was under the impression that address buses go up to 36-bit (allowing an address space of 2^36).
I've looked around, using everyone's friend (!) and there doesn't seem to be a nice, logical table giving all the relevant data that I'll need for the course and exam. I hope I don't have to remember the massive list that we were shown in the classroom!
