What is a 32-bit Operating System?
Most computers made in the 1990s and early 2000s were 32-bit machines. The CPU register stores memory addresses, which is how the processor accesses data from RAM. One bit in the register can reference an individual byte in memory, so a 32-bit system can address a maximum of 4 GB (4,294,967,296 bytes) of RAM. The actual limit is often less than around 3.5 GB since part of the register is used to store other temporary values besides memory addresses. Most computers released over the past two decades were built on a 32-bit architecture, hence most operating systems were designed to run on a 32-bit processor.
Difference Between 32-bit and 64-bit Operating Systems
In computing, there are two types of processors existing, i.e., 32-bit and 64-bit processors. These types of processors tell us how much memory a processor can access from a CPU register. For instance,
A 32-bit system can access 232 different memory addresses, i.e. 4 GB of RAM or physical memory ideally, it can access more than 4 GB of RAM also.
A 64-bit system can access 264 different memory addresses, i.e. actually 18-quintillion bytes of RAM. In short, any amount of memory greater than 4 GB can be easily handled by it.
Table of Content
- What is a 32-Bit Operating System?
- What is a 64-Bit Operating System?
- Difference Between 32-bit and 64-bit Operating System
- Advantages of 64-bit Over 32-bit