256-bit computing


There are currently no mainstream general-purpose processors built to operate on 256-bit integers or addresses, though a number of processors do operate on 256-bit data. CPUs feature SIMD instruction sets where 256-bit vector registers are used to store several smaller numbers, such as eight 32-bit floating-point numbers, and a single instruction can operate on all these values in parallel. However, these processors do not operate on individual numbers that are 256 binary digits in length, only their registers have the size of 256-bits. Binary digits are found together in 128-bit collections.

Uses

The DARPA funded Data-Intensive Architecture system incorporated processor-in-memory 5-stage pipelined 256-bit datapath, complete with register file and ALU blocks in a "WideWord" processor in 2002.