What is the size of int on a 8-bit processor?

Question

I was asked in an interview, what is the size of integer on a 8-bit processor machine? I answer 8 bits. Is it right?

From the perspective of what? – Alex K. Nov 05 '14 at 12:44 — Alex K., Nov 05 '14 at 12:44
Processor bitness and int size are unrelated. – Alex F Nov 05 '14 at 12:47 — Alex F, Nov 05 '14 at 12:47

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 05 '14 at 12:43

1

The RANGE of an 8 bit INTEGER is;

-128 to 127 and has 1 byte per element.

answered Nov 05 '14 at 12:43

Shqiptar_Programmer

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 05 '14 at 12:44

Integer is a higher-level programming concept not strictly tied to the size of the memory positions in a processor or the number of bytes the processor can operate on in a single operation (word size). 64-bit integers existed before the 64-bit processor. In an 8 bit processor a 64-bit integer would just be stored in multiple memory positions (this will however mean a lot more work for a < 64-bit processor to process - since it would have to do reads/writes and calculations involving multiple memory positions).

What is the size of int on a 8-bit processor?

2 Answers2