somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> "Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote

> >   Just because the 16-bit operations are performed on pairs of 8-bit
> > registers that doesn't make it any less of a 16-bit operation. The
> > crucial thing is that you can perform a 16-bit operation with *one*
> > single opcode.

> It doesn't work like that. Otherwise, we should call x86 architecture 64
> bits, 128 bits or even higher.

  I was talking about *all* the ALU operations, such as addition,
substraction, etc. In some processors there might be a few special
opcodes that perform an operation with larger numbers by using several
registers (such as the shifting of two registers as if they were one
in x86), but these are rare.

  If it was about data bus width, then some 32-bit processors would
in reality be 128-bit or 256-bit because they have really wide data
buses. Heck, if I remember correctly, even the Pentium4 has a 64-bit
data bus, yet it's still a 32-bit processor.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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