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computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...
, a word is the natural unit of data used by a particular
processor Processor may refer to: Computing Hardware * Processor (computing) **Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program *** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit (I ...
design. A word is a fixed-sized
datum In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...
handled as a unit by the
instruction set In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
or the hardware of the processor. The number of bits or digits in a word (the ''word size'', ''word width'', or ''word length'') is an important characteristic of any specific processor design or computer architecture. The size of a word is reflected in many aspects of a computer's structure and operation; the majority of the registers in a processor are usually word-sized and the largest datum that can be transferred to and from the
working memory Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, ...
in a single operation is a word in many (not all) architectures. The largest possible
address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along w ...
size, used to designate a location in memory, is typically a hardware word (here, "hardware word" means the full-sized natural word of the processor, as opposed to any other definition used). Documentation for older computers with fixed word size commonly states memory sizes in words rather than bytes or characters. The documentation sometimes uses
metric prefix A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a basic unit of measure to indicate a multiple or submultiple of the unit. All metric prefixes used today are decadic. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to any unit symbol. The pre ...
es correctly, sometimes with rounding, e.g., ''65 kilowords'' (KW) meaning for 65536 words, and sometimes uses them incorrectly, with ''kilowords'' (KW) meaning 1024 words (210) and megawords (MW) meaning 1,048,576 words (220). With standardization on 8-bit bytes and byte addressability, stating memory sizes in bytes, kilobytes, and megabytes with powers of 1024 rather than 1000 has become the norm, although there is some use of the
IEC The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
binary prefix A binary prefix is a unit prefix for multiples of units. It is most often used in data processing, data transmission, and digital information, principally in association with the bit and the byte, to indicate multiplication by a power of& ...
es. Several of the earliest computers (and a few modern as well) use
binary-coded decimal In computing and electronic systems, binary-coded decimal (BCD) is a class of binary encodings of decimal numbers where each digit is represented by a fixed number of bits, usually four or eight. Sometimes, special bit patterns are used for ...
rather than plain
binary Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two digits (0 and 1) * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical operation that t ...
, typically having a word size of 10 or 12
decimal The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers of the Hindu–Arabic numeral ...
digits, and some early
decimal computer Decimal computers are computers which can represent numbers and addresses in decimal as well as providing instructions to operate on those numbers and addresses directly in decimal, without conversion to a pure binary representation. Some also ha ...
s have no fixed word length at all. Early binary systems tended to use word lengths that were some multiple of 6-bits, with the 36-bit word being especially common on
mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
computers. The introduction of
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
led to the move to systems with word lengths that were a multiple of 8-bits, with 16-bit machines being popular in the 1970s before the move to modern processors with 32 or 64 bits. Special-purpose designs like
digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on MOS integrated circuit chips. They are widely used in audio si ...
s, may have any word length from 4 to 80 bits. The size of a word can sometimes differ from the expected due to
backward compatibility Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especially i ...
with earlier computers. If multiple compatible variations or a family of processors share a common architecture and instruction set but differ in their word sizes, their documentation and software may become notationally complex to accommodate the difference (see Size families below).


Uses of words

Depending on how a computer is organized, word-size units may be used for: ;Fixed-point numbers: Holders for fixed point, usually
integer An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign (−1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the language ...
, numerical values may be available in one or in several different sizes, but one of the sizes available will almost always be the word. The other sizes, if any, are likely to be multiples or fractions of the word size. The smaller sizes are normally used only for efficient use of memory; when loaded into the processor, their values usually go into a larger, word sized holder. ;Floating-point numbers: Holders for
floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...
numerical values are typically either a word or a multiple of a word. ;Addresses: Holders for memory addresses must be of a size capable of expressing the needed range of values but not be excessively large, so often the size used is the word though it can also be a multiple or fraction of the word size. ;Registers:
Processor register A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processor. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-only. ...
s are designed with a size appropriate for the type of data they hold, e.g. integers, floating-point numbers, or addresses. Many computer architectures use general-purpose registers that are capable of storing data in multiple representations. ;Memory–processor transfer: When the processor reads from the memory subsystem into a register or writes a register's value to memory, the amount of data transferred is often a word. Historically, this amount of bits which could be transferred in one cycle was also called a ''catena'' in some environments (such as the Bull ). In simple memory subsystems, the word is transferred over the memory
data bus In computer architecture, a bus (shortened form of the Latin '' omnibus'', and historically also called data highway or databus) is a communication system that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers. This ex ...
, which typically has a width of a word or half-word. In memory subsystems that use caches, the word-sized transfer is the one between the processor and the first level of cache; at lower levels of the
memory hierarchy In computer architecture, the memory hierarchy separates computer storage into a hierarchy based on response time. Since response time, complexity, and capacity are related, the levels may also be distinguished by their performance and controlli ...
larger transfers (which are a multiple of the word size) are normally used. ;Unit of address resolution: In a given architecture, successive address values designate successive units of memory; this unit is the unit of address resolution. In most computers, the unit is either a character (e.g. a byte) or a word. (A few computers have used bit resolution.) If the unit is a word, then a larger amount of memory can be accessed using an address of a given size at the cost of added complexity to access individual characters. On the other hand, if the unit is a byte, then individual characters can be addressed (i.e. selected during the memory operation). ;Instructions: Machine instructions are normally the size of the architecture's word, such as in
RISC architectures In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
, or a multiple of the "char" size that is a fraction of it. This is a natural choice since instructions and data usually share the same memory subsystem. In
Harvard architecture The Harvard architecture is a computer architecture with separate storage and signal pathways for instructions and data. It contrasts with the von Neumann architecture, where program instructions and data share the same memory and pathways. ...
s the word sizes of instructions and data need not be related, as instructions and data are stored in different memories; for example, the processor in the 1ESS electronic telephone switch has 37-bit instructions and 23-bit data words.


Word size choice

When a computer architecture is designed, the choice of a word size is of substantial importance. There are design considerations which encourage particular bit-group sizes for particular uses (e.g. for addresses), and these considerations point to different sizes for different uses. However, considerations of economy in design strongly push for one size, or a very few sizes related by multiples or fractions (submultiples) to a primary size. That preferred size becomes the word size of the architecture.
Character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
size was in the past (pre-variable-sized
character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
) one of the influences on unit of address resolution and the choice of word size. Before the mid-1960s, characters were most often stored in six bits; this allowed no more than 64 characters, so the alphabet was limited to upper case. Since it is efficient in time and space to have the word size be a multiple of the character size, word sizes in this period were usually multiples of 6 bits (in binary machines). A common choice then was the 36-bit word, which is also a good size for the numeric properties of a floating point format. After the introduction of the IBM
System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...
design, which uses eight-bit characters and supports lower-case letters, the standard size of a character (or more accurately, a
byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
) becomes eight bits. Word sizes thereafter are naturally multiples of eight bits, with 16, 32, and 64 bits being commonly used.


Variable-word architectures

Early machine designs included some that used what is often termed a ''variable word length''. In this type of organization, an operand has no fixed length. Depending on the machine and the instruction, the length might be denoted by a count field, by a delimiting character, or by an additional bit called, e.g., flag, or
word mark __notoc__ A wordmark, word mark, or logotype, is usually a distinct text-only typographic treatment of the name of a company, institution, or product name used for purposes of identification and branding. Examples can be found in the graphic iden ...
. Such machines often use
binary-coded decimal In computing and electronic systems, binary-coded decimal (BCD) is a class of binary encodings of decimal numbers where each digit is represented by a fixed number of bits, usually four or eight. Sometimes, special bit patterns are used for ...
in 4-bit digits, or in 6-bit characters, for numbers. This class of machines includes the IBM 702, IBM 705,
IBM 7080 The IBM 7080 was a variable word length BCD transistor computer in the IBM 700/7000 series commercial architecture line, introduced in August 1961, that provided an upgrade path from the vacuum tube IBM 705 computer. The 7080 weighed about . ...
,
IBM 7010 The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale ( mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s use vacuum-tube lo ...
, UNIVAC 1050, IBM 1401, IBM 1620, and RCA 301. Most of these machines work on one unit of memory at a time and since each instruction or datum is several units long, each instruction takes several cycles just to access memory. These machines are often quite slow because of this. For example, instruction fetches on an
IBM 1620 Model I The IBM 1620 was announced by IBM on October 21, 1959, and marketed as an inexpensive scientific computer. After a total production of about two thousand machines, it was withdrawn on November 19, 1970. Modified versions of the 1620 were used as ...
take 8 cycles (160 μs) just to read the 12 digits of the instruction (the Model II reduced this to 6 cycles, or 4 cycles if the instruction did not need both address fields). Instruction execution takes a variable number of cycles, depending on the size of the operands.


Word, bit and byte addressing

The memory model of an architecture is strongly influenced by the word size. In particular, the resolution of a memory address, that is, the smallest unit that can be designated by an address, has often been chosen to be the word. In this approach, the
word-addressable In computer architecture, ''word addressing'' means that addresses of memory on a computer uniquely identify words of memory. It is usually used in contrast with byte addressing, where addresses uniquely identify bytes. Almost all modern compute ...
machine approach, address values which differ by one designate adjacent memory words. This is natural in machines which deal almost always in word (or multiple-word) units, and has the advantage of allowing instructions to use minimally sized fields to contain addresses, which can permit a smaller instruction size or a larger variety of instructions. When byte processing is to be a significant part of the workload, it is usually more advantageous to use the
byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
, rather than the word, as the unit of address resolution. Address values which differ by one designate adjacent bytes in memory. This allows an arbitrary character within a character string to be addressed straightforwardly. A word can still be addressed, but the address to be used requires a few more bits than the word-resolution alternative. The word size needs to be an integer multiple of the character size in this organization. This addressing approach was used in the IBM 360, and has been the most common approach in machines designed since then. When the workload involves processing fields of different sizes, it can be advantageous to address to the bit. Machines with bit addressing may have some instructions that use a programmer-defined byte size and other instructions that operate on fixed data sizes. As an example, on the IBM 7030 ("Stretch"), a floating point instruction can only address words while an integer arithmetic instruction can specify a field length of 1-64 bits, a byte size of 1-8 bits and an accumulator offset of 0-127 bits. In a
byte-addressable Byte addressing in hardware architectures supports accessing individual bytes. Computers with byte addressing are sometimes called ''byte machines,'' in contrast to ''word-addressable'' architectures, ''word machines'', that access data by word. ...
machine with storage-to-storage (SS) instructions, there are typically move instructions to copy one or multiple bytes from one arbitrary location to another. In a byte-oriented (
byte-addressable Byte addressing in hardware architectures supports accessing individual bytes. Computers with byte addressing are sometimes called ''byte machines,'' in contrast to ''word-addressable'' architectures, ''word machines'', that access data by word. ...
) machine without SS instructions, moving a single byte from one arbitrary location to another is typically: # LOAD the source byte # STORE the result back in the target byte Individual bytes can be accessed on a word-oriented machine in one of two ways. Bytes can be manipulated by a combination of shift and mask operations in registers. Moving a single byte from one arbitrary location to another may require the equivalent of the following: # LOAD the word containing the source byte # SHIFT the source word to align the desired byte to the correct position in the target word #
AND or AND may refer to: Logic, grammar, and computing * Conjunction (grammar), connecting two words, phrases, or clauses * Logical conjunction in mathematical logic, notated as "∧", "⋅", "&", or simple juxtaposition * Bitwise AND, a boole ...
the source word with a mask to zero out all but the desired bits # LOAD the word containing the target byte # AND the target word with a mask to zero out the target byte # OR the registers containing the source and target words to insert the source byte # STORE the result back in the target location Alternatively many word-oriented machines implement byte operations with instructions using special ''byte pointers'' in registers or memory. For example, the
PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...
byte pointer contained the size of the byte in bits (allowing different-sized bytes to be accessed), the bit position of the byte within the word, and the word address of the data. Instructions could automatically adjust the pointer to the next byte on, for example, load and deposit (store) operations.


Powers of two

Different amounts of memory are used to store data values with different degrees of precision. The commonly used sizes are usually a
power of two A power of two is a number of the form where is an integer, that is, the result of exponentiation with number two as the base and integer  as the exponent. In a context where only integers are considered, is restricted to non-negative ...
multiple of the unit of address resolution (byte or word). Converting the index of an item in an array into the memory address offset of the item then requires only a shift operation rather than a multiplication. In some cases this relationship can also avoid the use of division operations. As a result, most modern computer designs have word sizes (and other operand sizes) that are a power of two times the size of a byte.


Size families

As computer designs have grown more complex, the central importance of a single word size to an architecture has decreased. Although more capable hardware can use a wider variety of sizes of data, market forces exert pressure to maintain
backward compatibility Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especially i ...
while extending processor capability. As a result, what might have been the central word size in a fresh design has to coexist as an alternative size to the original word size in a backward compatible design. The original word size remains available in future designs, forming the basis of a size family. In the mid-1970s, DEC designed the
VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The VA ...
to be a 32-bit successor of the 16-bit
PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...
. They used ''word'' for a 16-bit quantity, while ''longword'' referred to a 32-bit quantity; this terminology is the same as the terminology used for the PDP-11. This was in contrast to earlier machines, where the natural unit of addressing memory would be called a ''word'', while a quantity that is one half a word would be called a ''halfword''. In fitting with this scheme, a VAX ''quadword'' is 64 bits. They continued this 16-bit word/32-bit longword/64-bit quadword terminology with the 64-bit
Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whic ...
. Another example is the
x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...
family, of which processors of three different word lengths (16-bit, later 32- and 64-bit) have been released, while ''word'' continues to designate a 16-bit quantity. As software is routinely ported from one word-length to the next, some APIs and documentation define or refer to an older (and thus shorter) word-length than the full word length on the CPU that software may be compiled for. Also, similar to how bytes are used for small numbers in many programs, a shorter word (16 or 32 bits) may be used in contexts where the range of a wider word is not needed (especially where this can save considerable stack space or cache memory space). For example, Microsoft's
Windows API The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...
maintains the
programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...
definition of ''WORD'' as 16 bits, despite the fact that the API may be used on a 32- or 64-bit x86 processor, where the standard word size would be 32 or 64 bits, respectively. Data structures containing such different sized words refer to them as: * ''WORD'' (16 bits/2 bytes) * ''DWORD'' (32 bits/4 bytes) * ''QWORD'' (64 bits/8 bytes) A similar phenomenon has developed in Intel's x86
assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...
– because of the support for various sizes (and backward compatibility) in the instruction set, some instruction mnemonics carry "d" or "q" identifiers denoting "double-", "quad-" or "double-quad-", which are in terms of the architecture's original 16-bit word size. An example with a different word size is the IBM
System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...
family. In the System/360 architecture, System/370 architecture and System/390 architecture, there are 8-bit ''byte''s, 16-bit ''halfword''s, 32-bit ''word''s and 64-bit ''doubleword''s. The
z/Architecture z/Architecture, initially and briefly called ESA Modal Extensions (ESAME), is IBM's 64-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architecture, implemented by its mainframe computers. IBM introduced its first z/Architecture-b ...
, which is the 64-bit member of that architecture family, continues to refer to 16-bit ''halfword''s, 32-bit ''word''s, and 64-bit ''doubleword''s, and additionally features 128-bit ''quadword''s. In general, new processors must use the same data word lengths and virtual address widths as an older processor to have
binary compatibility Binary-code compatibility (binary compatible or object-code-compatible) is a property of a computer system, meaning that it can run the same executable code, typically machine code for a general-purpose computer CPU, that another computer syst ...
with that older processor. Often carefully written source code – written with source-code compatibility and software portability in mind – can be recompiled to run on a variety of processors, even ones with different data word lengths or different address widths or both.


Table of word sizes


See also

* Integer (computer science)


Notes


References

{{CPU technologies Data types Primitive types Units of information