Word (computer architecture)

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In computing, a word is a fixed-sized datum handled as the natural or historical unit of data by the instruction set or the hardware of a 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 in a single operation is a word in many (not all) architectures. The largest possible address 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). Several of the earliest computers (and a few modern as well) use binary-coded decimal rather than plain binary, typically having a word size of 10 or 12 decimal...

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