What Is a Bit Size?

In the early days of computing, what you referred to as a bite depended upon the system of architecture you were working with. There were five bit bites, six bit bites, seven bit bites. These were all kind of hashing out over time as various companies were building out computer systems. So smaller word size means you are working with smaller amounts of information that the processor can handle. It limits what your processor can do, and thus limits what your computer can do.