However, there is a paradox: although it makes sense for everyone that Windows 95 and Windows NT need at least a 32-bit processor, you may not understand why Windows for Workgroups 3.11 has the same requirement. A 80386 is indeed the absolute minimum for these three systems. The case of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 seems to be atypical as, to my knowledge, no 32-bit operating system requires a 64-bit CPU. Some late Pentium M and the first generation of Intel Core (32-bit processors by design, derivated from the P6 architecture) are able to run the latest Windows 10 x86 !
You may think Windows for Workgroups 3.11 isn't compatible with 80286 (the last 16-bit x86) because it possibly requires a specific feature introduced by the i386, still available when that CPU runs in 16-bit protected mode; a feature not supported by earlier processors (and never added to the later 16-bit ones: although the 80386 was released in 1985, computers with 80286 were sold until the early 1990s), just like many relatively recent 32-bit processors cannot run Windows 8 and higher because they lack NX and/or SSE2. Thus, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 might be a 16-bit environment that could theoretically be ran by a 16-bit x86 but there wouldn't exist a such processor in the real world. The reality is simpler: Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is actually a 32-bit system, although mainly designed to run 16-bit apps. That statement is true for previous Windows 3.x versions too, when running in "enhanced mode". Since the last Windows for Workgroups removed the standard (16-bit protected) mode, it requires a 32-bit processor.
You can read Raymond Chen's explanation to learn more about Windows 3.11. Raymond Chen is a senior program manager at Microsoft.
source: http://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthi ... 0/?p=14013
Raymond Chen wrote: 17 May, 14:00 If Windows 3.11 required a 32-bit processor, why was it called a 16-bit operating system?
Commenter Really16 asks via the Suggestion Box how 32-bit Win32s was, and why Windows 3.11 was called 16-bit Windows when it required a 32-bit CPU and ran in 32-bit protected mode. First, let’s look at how Windows worked in so-called Standard mode. Actually, it was quite simple: In Standard mode, Windows consisted of a 16-bit protected-mode kernel which ran applications in 16-bit protected mode. I suspect there would be no controversy over calling this a 16-bit operating system. With the introduction of Enhanced mode, things got more complicated. With Enhanced mode, there were actually three operating systems running at the same time. The operating system in charge of the show was the 32-bit virtual machine manager which ran in 32-bit protected mode. As you might suspect from its name, the virtual machine manager created virtual machines. Inside the first virtual machine ran… a copy of Standard mode Windows. (This is not actually true, but the differences are not important here. Don’t make me bring back the Nitpicker’s Corner.) The other virtual machines each ran a copy of MS-DOS and were responsible for your MS-DOS sessions. Recall that Enhanced mode Windows allowed you to run multiple MS-DOS prompts that were pre-emptively multi-tasked. These other virtual machines ran in a variety of modes, but spent most of their time in virtual-86 mode. MS-DOS applications could use the DPMI interface to switch into 16-bit protected mode, or even 32-bit protected mode if they wanted to. (And that’s how Standard mode Windows ran inside the first virtual machine: It used the DPMI interface to switch to 16-bit protected mode.) It’s kind of stunning to realize that Enhanced mode Windows was really a completely new operating system with multiple virtual machines, pre-emptively multi-tasked with virtual memory. In principle, it could have created a virtual machine and hosted yet another random operating system inside it, but in practice the only two operating systems it bothered to host were Standard mode Windows and MS-DOS. Enhanced mode Windows was called a 16-bit operating system because it ran 16-bit Windows applications (inside a “Windows box”, you might say). The supervisor operating system was a 32-bit operating system, but since applications didn’t run in supervisor mode, that really didn’t mean much. For all anybody cared, the supervisor operating system could have been written in 6502 assembly language. As long as it does its supervisory job, it doesn’t matter what it’s written in. What people care about is the applications that you could run, and since Enhanced mode Windows ran 16-bit Windows applications, and since it ran a copy of 16-bit Standard mode Windows to do all the things that people considered Windows-y, it was the number 16 that was important. Besides, you can imagine the uproar from the Slashdot crowd (if Slashdot had existed back then) that an operating system whose purpose is to run 16-bit applications in a 16-bit GUI environment would dare call itself a 32-bit operating system. How 32-bit was Win32s? Pretty darned 32-bit. A Win32s application ran in the same virtual machine as the rest of Standard mode Windows, but when it ran, the CPU really was in 32-bit protected mode. Naturally, it did all its work under the supervision of the virtual machine manager, and it had to coordinate its work with the Standard mode Windows kernel that it was sharing the virtual machine with. But when your 32-bit application was running, you were bought in: Your registers were 32-bit, your pointers were 32-bit, you accessed data in a 32-bit data segment, and you executed 32-bit instructions out of a 32-bit code segment.