this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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Why we don't have 128-bit CPUs (www.xda-developers.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We can, but it's awkward to do so. By having everything work with powers of 2 you don't need to have everything the same size, but can still pack things in memory efficiently.

If your registers were 48bits long, you can use it to store 6 bytes, or 3 short ints, but only one int with 16-bits going unused. If they are powers of two in size, you can always fit smaller things in them with no wasted space.

[โ€“] asmoranomar 11 points 5 months ago

A better example is to explain the chaos of having to go to the grocery store and pick up some hot dogs and buns. You know the pain.