Question

Describe some advantages and limitations of the 8-bit architecture

Answer 1

Advantages of 8-bit Architecture:

1. 8-bit Architecture coded more efficiently with assembly code.
2. Simple & Cheap.
3. It is consume low power because they are simple architecture
4. we can perform any arthmetic &logical oparation on only 8-bit data at a time.
5. the 8-bit word length is twice 4-bits.
6. it allows two BCD numbers for each CPU data word.
7. Wide voltage range (1.8v-5.5v)
8. it has an address range of 256 memory words.
9. Small packages
10. very good in bit- manipulation
11. complete system on chip,does not need any external components.

Limitations of 8-bit Arcitecture:

1. it need many cycles to complete a large computation.
2. it can read only one instruction at a time,untill first instruction executed completely.
3. it can transfer at rate of 2^8 instruction per cycle.
4. length is 8-bit hence processing speed is low.
5. flag registers has limited flags.
6. we can store limited data bytes in the microprocessor memory.