16 bit

"16-bit" redirects here. For the color encoding, see Highcolor.

For the era of computer gaming commonly referred to as "16-bit", see History of video game consoles (fourth generation).

In computer architecture, 16-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are at most 16 bits (2 octets) wide. Also, 16-bit CPU and ALU architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size.

[edit] 16-bit architecture

Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Motorola 68000, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Motorola 68000 was 16-bit in that its data buses were 16 bits long; however, it was 32-bit in that the general purpose registers were 32 bits long and most arithmetic instructions supported 32-bit arithmetic, and 24-bit in that the address bus was 24 bits long.

A 16-bit integer can store 2¹⁶ (or 65536) unique values. In an unsigned representation, these values are the integers between 0 and 65535; using two's complement, possible values range from −32768 to 32767. Hence, a processor with 16-bit memory addresses can directly access 64 KiB of byte-addressable memory.

16-bit processors have been almost entirely supplanted in the personal computer industry, but remain in use in a wide variety of embedded applications. For example the 16-bit XAP processor is used in many ASICs.

The 16-bit processor of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis was a highly advertised feature of the video game system. Due to the saturation of this advertising, the 1988-1995 era of video game consoles is often called "the 16-bit era".

[edit] 16-bit File format

A 16-bit File format is a binary File format for which each elementary information is defined on 16 bits (or 2 Bytes). An example of such a format is the Windows Metafile Format.