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Guy Harris (talk | contribs) I suspect few feature phones have 64-bit processors; smartphones are the phones now going 64-bit. x86-64 isn't the only 64-bit personal computer or server architecture. |
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==Technical history==
The world's first stored-program [[electronic computer]], the [[Manchester Baby]], used a 32-bit architecture in 1948, although it was only a [[proof of concept]] and had little practical capacity. It held only 32
Memory, as well as other digital [[electronic circuit|circuits]] and wiring, was expensive during the first decades of 32-bit architectures (the 1960s to the 1980s).<ref>{{cite book|last1=Patterson|first1=David|last2=Ditzel|first2=David|title=Readings in Computer Architecture|date=2000|publisher=Academic Press|___location=San Diego|isbn=9781558605398|page=136}}</ref> Older 32-bit processor families (or simpler, cheaper variants thereof) could therefore have many compromises and limitations in order to cut costs. This could be a 16-bit [[Arithmetic logic unit|ALU]], for instance, or external (or internal) buses narrower than 32 bits, limiting memory size or demanding more cycles for instruction fetch, execution or write back.
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