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A 16 bit application is any software written for MS-DOS, OS/2 1.x or early versions of Microsoft Windows which originally ran on the 16-bit Intel 8088 and Intel 80286 microprocessors. Such applications used a 20-bit or 24-bit segment or selector-offset address representation to extend the range of addressable memory locations beyond what was possible using only 16-bit addresses. Programs containing more than 216 bytes (64 kibibytes) of instructions and data therefore required special instructions to switch between their 64-kibibyte segments, increasing the complexity of programming 16-bit applications.
| Processors | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4-bit | 8-bit | 12-bit | 16-bit | 18-bit | 24-bit | 31-bit | 32-bit | 36-bit | 48-bit | 64-bit | 128-bit |
| Applications | |||||||||||
| 8-bit | 16-bit | 31-bit | 32-bit | 64-bit | |||||||
| Data Sizes | |||||||||||
| 4-bit | 8-bit | 16-bit | 32-bit | 64-bit | 128-bit | ||||||
| nibble byte octet word dword qword | |||||||||||
In computer architecture, 16-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are at most 16 bits (2 octets) wide. Also, 16-bit CPU and ALU architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size.
16-bit is also a term given to a generation of computers in which 16-bit processors were the norm.
See also
This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.
