32 bit vs 64 bit

You all might have heard about these different versions of processors,operating systems,applications which are categorized into 16, 32 or 64 bit. What makes these different from others? Why couldn't they come up with a single version of bit system? Which is better? In this post I am hoping to discuss these topics.


First thing to understand is, that there are processors categorized into these bit systems. If a processor is said to be 32 bit, it implies that it is working with 32 bit chunks. As a result a 32 bit processor can support only up to 4GB of physical memory( RAM ) : cs guys, you know why! ( Mostly I will not be getting into details about these because I want everyone who reads my articles to understand what I am talking about)

Okay, Now why did the manufacturers have to design these different types of processors ? why couldn't they design a standard system without changing the number of bits? Below, I have listed down two advantages of increasing the number of bits which a processor uses.

As the number of bits increases there are two important benefits.

• More bits means that data can be processed in larger chunks which also means more accurately.
• More bits means our system can point to or address a larger number of locations in physical memory.

So that is why they came up with different systems.

Okay, now let us come to something important. Think that you don't know what your system is( in bit terms ), can you install any version of operating system into it? will a 32 bit processor support a 64 bit version of OS, and vice versa?

 Then what about applications? Can a 32 bit operating system run a 64 bit application? or what about the other way around?

I found a wonderful summary for that. Check the illustration below.