What makes a chip truly 64-bit?

majormattmajormatt
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Someone today argued that current chips (X86 and PPC) are considered 64-bit microproccessors, but I dont believe this to be true. They are classified as 32-bit because of the registers, right?



And the PPC970 will hace 64 bit registers?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    kecksykecksy Posts: 1,002member
    A CPU is generally called 64-bits if it can address several terabytes of memory and has 64-bit integer registers.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    majormattmajormatt Posts: 1,077member
    So, X86 have just 32-bit integer registers until AMD's hammer?
  • Reply 3 of 3
    kecksykecksy Posts: 1,002member
    [quote]Originally posted by MajorMatt:

    <strong>So, X86 have just 32-bit integer registers until AMD's hammer?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Yes, that and 36-bit memory addressing.



    Hammer will have 64-bit integer registers and 64-bit memory addressing.
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