Central processing unit
In the 20th century engineers invented many different computer architectures. Nowadays most desktop computers use either 32-bit CPUs or 64-bit CPUs. The instructions in a 32-bit CPU are good at handling data that is 32 bits in size (most instructions "think" in 32 bits in a 32-bit CPU). Likewise, a 64-bit CPU is good at handling data that is 64 bits in size (and often good at handling 32-bit data too). The size of data that a CPU handles best is often called the word size of the CPU. Many old CPUs from the 70s, 80s and early 90s (and many modern embedded systems) have an 8-bit or 16-bit word size. When CPUs were invented in the middle 20th century they had many different word sizes. Some had different word sizes for instructions and data. The less popular word sizes later stopped being used.