Word Size

Tags

comp-arch

Is the computers preferred size for moving units of information around. Technically the word size is the width of your processors registers, I.E. the holding area your processor uses to do arithmetic and logical calculations.

When a computer is said to be 32-bit or 64-bit it is referencing the word size.

The word size also directly affects the addressable address space of a process, meaning it also affects the number of bits required to maintain a pointer to some area of memory. Switching from 32-bit to 64-bit immediately increases the size of the process in memory because now all of its pointers are twice as big, however the process can now address \( 2^{64} \) unique addresses if needed.