What does one mean by addressing capability of a microprocessor? I read in a book that the Intel 80286 microprocessor has an addressing capability of 16 MB. Does this mean it can process 16 MB of data at a time? Please explain what is actually meant by addressing capability.
It means that the CPU can access 16MB of memory directly, since each memory address is 24 bits long. This is although the registers are only 16 bits long (the trick is the segment registers).