Ask HN: Why do we have only 32 bit and 64 bit OS?

2 points by venkat1017 ↗ HN

8 comments

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because that's what's native to the processors we have.
I worked on ICL computers in the 1970s with 24 bit words made up of four 6 bit bytes. Having just 64 characters limited text output a lot. Having 8 bits was much better and it stuck.

Using 4 or 8 of those is just about address space.

Because 8-16 bit cpu's are fine without. Eg baremetal AVR firmware comes without all the OS bloat, it does one thing only.