16-bit

16-bit architecture

Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16 bits long and arithmetic instructions, even though its external bus was 8 bits wide.

A 16-bit integer can store 2¹⁶ (or 65536) unique values. In an unsigned representation, these values are the integers between 0 and 65535; using two's complement, possible values range from −32768 to 32767. Hence, a processor with 16-bit memory addresses can directly access 64 KiB of byte-addressable memory.

16-bit processors have been almost entirely supplanted in the personal computer industry, but remain in use in a wide variety of embedded applications. For example the 16-bit XAP processor is used in many ASICs.

The 16/32-bit Motorola 68000

The Motorola 68000 is sometimes called "16-bit" because its data buses were 16 bits wide, however it was 32-bit in that the general purpose registers were 32 bits long and most arithmetic instructions supported 32-bit arithmetic, with up to 16 megabytes of addressable RAM. Thus the 68000 software is 32-bit in nature, and forwards-compatible with other 32-bit processors. The 68000 processor of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis was a highly advertised feature of the video game system. Due to the saturation of this advertising, the 1988-1995 era of video game consoles is often called "the 16-bit era".

16-bit File format

A 16-bit File format is a binary File format for which each data element is defined on 16 bits (or 2 Bytes). An example of such a format is the Windows Metafile Format.

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