[1][2] Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculations more efficiently and process more data per clock cycle.
Typical 32-bit personal computers also have a 32-bit address bus, permitting up to 4 GB of RAM to be accessed, far more than previous generations of system architecture allowed.
The world's first stored-program electronic computer, the Manchester Baby, used a 32-bit architecture in 1948, although it was only a proof of concept and had little practical capacity.
[4] Older 32-bit processor families (or simpler, cheaper variants thereof) could therefore have many compromises and limitations in order to cut costs.
This could be a 16-bit ALU, for instance, or external (or internal) buses narrower than 32 bits, limiting memory size or demanding more cycles for instruction fetch, execution or write back.
For example, the Pentium Pro processor is a 32-bit machine, with 32-bit registers and instructions that manipulate 32-bit quantities, but the external address bus is 36 bits wide, giving a larger address space than 4 GB, and the external data bus is 64 bits wide, primarily in order to permit a more efficient prefetch of instructions and data.
On the x86 architecture, a 32-bit application normally means software that typically (not necessarily) uses the 32-bit linear address space (or flat memory model) possible with the 80386 and later chips.
HDR imagery allows for the reflection of highlights that can still be seen as bright white areas, instead of dull grey shapes.