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Is a machine WORD always the same or does it depend on the machine architecture? And is the meaning of the word WORD context sensitive or generally applicable?
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In Intel's PC processor architecture, a word is 16 bits, or two contiguous eight-bit bytes. Some computer processor architectures support a half word, which is half the bit length of a word, and a double word (doubleword), which is two contiguous words.
Fundamental Data Types A byte is eight bits, a word is 2 bytes (16 bits), a doubleword is 4 bytes (32 bits), and a quadword is 8 bytes (64 bits).
Word sizes thereafter are naturally multiples of eight bits, with 16, 32, and 64 bits being commonly used.
A combination of 16 bits is called a word. Word "size" refers to the amount of data a CPU's internal data registers can hold and process at one time. Computers embedded in appliances and consumer products have word sizes of 8, 16, or 32 bits.
The machine word size depends on the architecture, but also how the operating system is running the application.
In Windows x64 for example an application can be run either as a 64 bit application (having a 64 bit mahine word), or as a 32 bit application (having a 32 bit machine word). So the size of a machine word can differ even on the same machine.
The term WORD has different meaning depending on how it's used. It can either mean a machine word, or a type with a specific size. In x86 assembly language WORD, DOUBLEWORD (DWORD) and QUADWORD (QWORD) are used for 2, 4 and 8 byte sizes, regardless of the machine word size.
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