Op 15 sep. 2016 11:57 p.m. schreef "Toby Thain" <t...@telegraphics.com.au>: > > On 2016-09-15 2:38 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> >> > From: Chuck Guzis >> >> > Call it anything you want, but we know what Motorola called it. >> >> The _first implementation_ may have been 16-bit, but I am in no doubt >> whatsover (having written a lot of assembler code for the 68K family) >> that the _architecture_ was 32-bit: >> >> - 32-bit registers >> - many operations (arithmetical, logical, etc) defined for that length >> - 32-bit addresses > > > GPR width, being the visible programmer model, is the most common and convenient definition of "architecture" I've come across. But there's no reason we can't just say the *visible* architecture is 32 bit (which it is), but the "internal" architecture is sort of 16.
Afaik, the term computer architecture was coined for the IBM 360, which was a 32-bit architecture, with 8, 16, 32, and 64 bit implementations. The term architecture specifically refers to what the programmer sees, not to the specifics of an implementation. Camiel
