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The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. [1] The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as either " 1" or "0 ", but other representations such as true/false, yes/no, on/off, or +/− are ...
Similarly, the most significant bit (MSb) represents the highest-order place of the binary integer. The LSb is sometimes referred to as the low-order bit or right-most bit, due to the convention in positional notation of writing less significant digits further to the right. The MSb is similarly referred to as the high-order bit or left-most bit.
For binary hardware, by far the most common hardware today, the smallest unit is the bit, a portmanteau of binary digit, [1] which represents a value that is one of two possible values; typically shown as 0 and 1. The nibble, 4 bits, represents the value of a single hexadecimal digit.
However, a binary number system with base −2 is also possible. The rightmost bit represents (−2) 0 = +1, the next bit represents (−2) 1 = −2, the next bit (−2) 2 = +4 and so on, with alternating sign. The numbers that can be represented with four bits are shown in the comparison table below.
In the binary system, each bit represents an increasing power of 2, with the rightmost bit representing 2 0, the next representing 2 1, then 2 2, and so on. The value of a binary number is the sum of the powers of 2 represented by each "1" bit. For example, the binary number 100101 is converted to decimal form as follows:
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), uses a 7-bit binary code to represent text and other characters within computers, communications equipment, and other devices. Each letter or symbol is assigned a number from 0 to 127. For example, lowercase "a" is represented by 1100001 as a bit string (which is decimal 97).
A binary image of a QR code, representing 1 bit per pixel, as opposed to a typical 24-bit true color image. See also: Binary file In modern computers , binary data refers to any data represented in binary form rather than interpreted on a higher level or converted into some other form.
The relation between numbers and bit patterns is chosen for convenience in computer manipulation; eight bytes stored in computer memory may represent a 64-bit real, two 32-bit reals, or four signed or unsigned integers, or some other kind of data that fits into eight bytes. The only difference is how the computer interprets them.