Understanding Bits Bytes Hex

This blog contains info about Bit, Byte, Hex.

I will add more info, if I learn something new on Binary system.

Bit

A bit is smallest storage unit. it has only two values 0 or 1. Computer stores everything in bits.

Byte

One byte is equal to 8 bits. Hence we can have 2⁸ different combinations i.e. 256.

What is use of this ? As computer can only store binary. To represent characters/numbers we use ASCII (American standard code for Informational interchange) representation. ASCII is numerical representation of character/numbers eg. A-Z = 65–90, a-z = 97–122 etc.

One byte is used to represent a character/number.

Hex

Hexadecimal is base 16. 1 hex digit requires 4 bit and hence 2 hex digit can represent 1 byte.

Why do we use a hexadecimal number system in computers ?

Computer can only work on binary number system. For our understanding, we convert binary into hexadecimal. So as an example if you convert binary number 1111000100010001 to hex it’s f111 and it’s very easy to read.