What are computer bits made of?

What are computer bits made of?

A binary digit, or bit , is the smallest unit of data in computing. It is represented by a 0 or a 1. Binary numbers are made up of binary digits (bits), eg the binary number 1001. The circuits in a computer’s processor are made up of billions of transistors .

How is a bit created?

Computers operate using binary (or base two) math. The binary language represents every would-be digit as a bit, and every bit is given a value of 0 or 1. A bit is generated through fluctuations of electric current that run through a computer’s components.

What is bit in computer science?

A bit is a binary digit, the smallest increment of data on a computer. A bit can hold only one of two values: 0 or 1, corresponding to the electrical values of off or on, respectively. Computer storage and memory is often measured in megabytes (MB) and gigabytes (GB).

What is the difference between a bit a byte and a word?

A byte is eight bits, a word is 2 bytes (16 bits), a doubleword is 4 bytes (32 bits), and a quadword is 8 bytes (64 bits).

What is bit byte word?

A bit (short for binary digit) is the smallest unit of data in a computer. In many systems, four eight-bit bytes or octets form a 32-bit word. In such systems, instruction lengths are sometimes expressed as full-word (32 bits in length) or half-word (16 bits in length).

Which is greater bit or byte?

Actually no, there’s a big difference between a bit and a byte. A byte is much bigger — eight times bigger, to be exact, with eight bits in every byte.

How many bits does a computer have?

Most computers now use 32 or 64 bits. These chunks are called words and are the basic units the computer manipulates when it is performing an action.

How many bits is a string?

Text strings are a sequence of characters (ie, words or multi- character symbols). Each character is stored one after the other, each occupying eight bits of memory storage.

What are bits and bytes and other units of measure?

ARCHIVED: What are bits, bytes, and other units of measure for digital information? Unit Equivalent 1 kilobyte (KB) 1,024 bytes 1 megabyte (MB) 1,048,576 bytes 1 gigabyte (GB) 1,073,741,824 bytes 1 terabyte (TB) 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

What is the value of a bit in a circuit?

When a bit is set its value is taken to be equal to 1 and when it is reset its value is taken to be 0. Thus, a bit can have one of the two values, i.e., 0 or 1. In electronics, memory circuits are called flip-flops. A flip-flop is the name given to a memory circuit which behaves in a manner similar to a switch.

How many values can a bit have?

Most computer operations involve manipulation of data stored in various memories. The smallest unit of computer memory is called a bit. When a bit is set its value is taken to be equal to 1 and when it is reset its value is taken to be 0. Thus, a bit can have one of the two values, i.e., 0 or 1.

How many possible combinations of bits are there in a byte?

There are two possible states in a bit, usually expressed as 0 and 1. A series of eight bits strung together makes a byte, much as 12 makes a dozen. With 8 bits, or 8 binary digits, there exist 2^ 8 =256 possible combinations. The following table shows some of these combinations.