See also: Bit (homonymy)

The bit is a Measuring unit in data processing indicating the elementary quantity of Information represented by a Chiffre of the Binary system. One owes of it the invention with John Tukey and popularization with Claude Shannon.

Within the framework of the Information theory proposed by Shannon, when one receives information corresponding to an event having 1 chance out of 2 to occur, one receives a bit information. For example, at the time of shooting to pile or face of engagement of football game, when the referee indicates that the part fell on pile, it gives a bit of information to the 2 captains of the teams in competition.

Vocabulary

The word “bit” is the Contraction of the English Bi nary digi' T , which means “binary digit”. In English, the expression has bit off has also the direction of “piece of”, “fragment of” or “piece of”.

One should not confuse a bit with a Byte, one byte being composed of several bits, generally 8, which in this case makes a Octet.

Notation of the values

A bit can take only two values. According to the numerical context, , Logique (see Boolean algebra), electronic numerical, or magnetic, one calls them “zero” and “one” what is equivalent respectively to “bottom” and “high”, “opened” and “closed”, or “north” and “south”: It is noted that value 0 is associated with “open” in electronics, because when a Interrupteur is open, then the circuit is opened, and the power is not on.

In the processors

The calculations carried out by the Processeur S generally do not relate on isolated bits, but to with a few tens of bits simultaneously. The modern processors are generally able to treat numbers of 8,16,32,64 or 128 bits.

See too

Simple: Bit

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