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Essential Guide to Semiconductors, The
book

Essential Guide to Semiconductors, The

by Jim Turley
December 2002
Beginner
239 pages
5h 43m
English
Pearson
Content preview from Essential Guide to Semiconductors, The

What do 4-Bit, 8-Bit, 16-Bit, and 32-Bit Mean?

The “bittedness” of a microprocessor tells you how fast and powerful it is in very broad terms. If you're a car buff, the number of bits is like the number of cylinders in the engine. A 4-bit processor is the very low end and 64-bit processors (for today, at least) are at the very high end. Most microprocessor chips fall somewhere in between. A PC or Macintosh has a 32-bit microprocessor; microwave ovens generally have an 8-bit processor, and a TV remote control is likely to use a 4-bit processor. The average late-model car includes about a dozen 16-bit microprocessors spread throughout the engine, the transmission, and the dashboard.

More technically, these numbers describe the size, or width, of ...

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Publisher Resources

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