Fixed Precision
With paper and pencil, I can write a number with as many digits as I want:
1,027,80,032,034,532,002,391,030,300,209,399,302,992,092,920
A microprocessor or computing system usually uses FIXED PRECISION for integers; they limit the numbers to a fixed number of bits:
$ AF4500239DEFA231 64 bit number, 16 hex digits $ 9DEFA231 32 bit number, 8 hex digits $ A231 16 bit number, 4 hex digits $ 31 8 bit number, 2 hex digits High end microprocessors use 64 or 32 bit precision; low end microprocessors use 16 or 8 bit precision.