Re:Q: Why are we still on x86 and 64bit and not 12 (Score 2)

The 16, 32, 64, 128-bit computing refers to the standard register size for integers and pointers in a processor. Specifically, a 32-bit computer can generally access 2^32 locations of memory, which is 4GB. A "true" 64-bit processor would be able to address 2^64 (18 quintrillian) bytes of memory. However, x86-64 only use 40 bytes for addressing, which will handle 1 TB of RAM. Additionally, doubling the data size makes every operation take significantly longer, so clock speeds have to suffer. Since very few applications actually need 64-bit or higher math functions, its more efficient to implement higher order stuff in software, and have a faster executing processor.