Why does 'lshw' tell me "32 bits"?

0

I ran lshw from a LiveUSB, but I'm not entirely clear how to understand one part of the output. In the first part, it says width: 32 bits, but just a few lines down in the CPU details it says width: 32 bits.

There are several slightly different models under the category of Dell Dimension E521, so it's been a bit tricky trying to research this, but it seems like the version I have is a 64 bit system.

What does lshw mean in the first part of the output by width: 32 bit?

Here are the relevant parts of the output (emphasis added):

sysresccd
    description: Desktop Computer
    product: Dimension E521 ()
    vendor: Dell Inc
    [width: 32 bits]   <-----------
    capabilities: smbios-2.4 dmi-2.4 smp-1.4 smp vsyscall32
    configuration: boot=normal chassis=desktop cpus=2 uuid=44454C4C-4400-1050-8052-C7C04F574331
  *-core
       description: Motherboard
       product: 0UW457
       vendor: Dell Inc
       physical id: 0
       version: A03
     *-cpu:0
          description: CPU
          product: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+
          vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
          physical id: 8
          bus info: cpu@0
          version: 15.11.1
          slot: Socket M2
          size: 1GHz
          capacity: 3GHz
          [width: 64 bits]   <-----------
          clock: 1GHz
          capabilities: boot fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp x86-64 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch lbrv vmmcall cpufreq

IQAndreas

Posted 2016-01-05T13:10:59.673

Reputation: 2 317

I wasn't sure whether to post this on SuperUser because it's a hardware question, or on Unix & Linux StackExchange because it's a question about the output of the Linux command lshw.

– IQAndreas – 2016-01-05T13:15:22.607

It means the OS your running is 32-bit running on a 64-bit processor. – Ramhound – 2016-01-05T13:27:23.690

No answers