What is the word size of a machine?

Answer 1

Word size of a computer may have different meanings depending on the computer's architecture.

• On computers with a fixed word size it is the number of binary bits lor decimal digits in its arithmetic registers (and usually its words in memory). On most fixed word size computers complete words are processed in parallel.
• On computers with a variable word size it is usually the number of bytes, alphanumeric characters, or decimal digits in a "word" in memory. Different "words" in memory may have different sizes depending on their use in the program, the size may be specified in a variety of ways: in the instruction, in a field in the data, etc. On variable word size computers the "words" are processed serially one byte, alphanumeric character, or decimal digit at a time.
• Some computers have both fixed and variable word size used in different instructions.