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16-bit application
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
| Microprocessors | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4-bit | 8-bit | 16-bit | 24-bit | 31-bit | 32-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.
This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.Chruscinski 07:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)