
Inside the machine
shifting, and similarly many minicomputers are now as powerful as main-
frame machines of only a few years earlier.
The CPU of a microcomputer may work with eight bits, sixteen bits or
thirty-two bits, and the number is fixed by the type of chip that has been
chosen. Minicomputers generally make use of specialized single-bit micro-
processors, the bit-slice type, and use whatever number, 32 or
48,
is required
to make up the size of group that the machine is designed around. The
mainframe type of machine still uses an assembled CPU, as distinct from the
silicon chip type, so as to obtain the highest possible operating speed