What makes a processor 32 or 64 bit?

Question

is it something inside it? is like the size of the processor? more transistors? the material of the processor?

Answer 1

With current processors it is the memory address space, a 32 bit processor uses 32 bits to address memory and thus can handle 4 GiB of RAM while a 64 bit processor uses up to 64 bits for memory addressing (current processors don't use all 64 bits but the number itself is a 64 bit number) which allows for much more RAM than any computer we have has (it's been estimated that it'll take us until the middle of the century to exhaust the 64 bit address space).

Answer 2

It's hard to explain, especially if you're not tech-savvy - check out the links below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32-bit