strangest systems I've sent email from

[Guy Sotomayor Jr]

> On May 24, 2016, at 1:29 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 22 May 2016 at 04:52, Guy Sotomayor Jr <ggs at shiresoft.com> wrote:
>> Because the 808x was a 16-bit processor with 1MB physical addressing.  I
>> would argue that for the time 808x was brilliant in that most other 16-bit
>> micros only allowed for 64KB physical.
> 
> 
> Er, hang on. I'm not sure if my knowledge isn't good enough or if that's a typo.
> 
> AFAIK most *8* bits only supported 64 kB physical. Most *16* bits
> (e.g. 68000, 65816, 80286, 80386SX) supported 16MB physical RAM.
> 
> Am I missing something here?
> 
> I always considered the 8088/8086 as a sort of hybrid 8/16-bit processor.
> 

My definition of a CPU’s bitness is the native register width and not the
bus width (or ALU width).

From that definition, the 8088/8086 are 16-bit CPUs.  I would certainly
consider the 68K, etc to be 32-bit CPUs.  The 80286 was definitely a 16-bit
CPU and *any* 80386 (SX, DX, whatever) are most definitely 32-bits.

Your argument would say that most of the low end IBM 360’s would be
16-bit machines which is insane.

TTFN - Guy