Question:

The size of the general-purpose registers in the 8086 microprocessor is

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The bitness of a processor (e.g., 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit) generally refers to the width of its general-purpose registers and the amount of data it can process in a single instruction.
Updated On: Jul 2, 2026
  • 8 bits
  • 16 bits
  • 32 bits
  • 64 bits
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The Correct Option is B

Solution and Explanation

The Intel 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor. This 16-bit designation primarily refers to the size of its internal architecture components.
Key features of the 8086 architecture include:
A 16-bit data bus. 16-bit general-purpose registers (AX, BX, CX, DX). 16-bit index and pointer registers (SI, DI, SP, BP). 16-bit segment registers (CS, DS, SS, ES).
While the 8-bit registers (AH, AL, BH, BL, etc.) exist as the high and low bytes of the 16-bit general-purpose registers, the primary register size is 16 bits.
Therefore, the size of the general-purpose registers in the 8086 microprocessor is 16 bits.
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