What does it mean by word size in computer?

word computer-architecture
kofhearts picture kofhearts · Nov 6, 2013 · Viewed 83.4k times · Source

I have tried to get a grasp of what "word" means and I have looked in the wiki and the definition is vague. So my question is what is "word size"? Is it the length of the data bus, address bus?

Answer

ᴇʟᴇvᴀтᴇ picture ᴇʟᴇvᴀтᴇ · Nov 6, 2013

"Word size" refers to the number of bits processed by a computer's CPU in one go (these days, typically 32 bits or 64 bits). Data bus size, instruction size, address size are usually multiples of the word size.

Just to confuse matters, for backwards compatibility, Microsoft Windows API defines a WORD as being 16 bits, a DWORD as 32 bits and a QWORD as 64 bits, regardless of the processor.

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