What determines the number of bits that the computer can transmit at one time?

If you do the same thing with bits that can only be 1 or 0, each position in the list of bits represents some power of two. 1001 means one eight plus no fours plus no twos plus one extra. This is called binary notation. You can convert numbers from binary notation to decimal notation, but you seldom have to.

Bytes
Numbers like 00110111 10110000 are a lot easier to read if you put spaces every 8 bits. In decimal notation, we use commas every three digits for the same reason. There's nothing special about 8 bits, it just kind of got started that way. Hardware is easier to build if you group the wires consistently from one piece to another. Some older hardware used to group wires in 10s, but in the 70s the idea of working in groups of 8 really took over, especially in the design of integrated circuits. Somebody made a joke about a group carrying a byte of the data, and the term stuck. Sometimes you hear a group of four bits called a nibble.

The largest number you can represent with 8 bits is 11111111, or 255 in decimal notation. Since 00000000 is the smallest, you can represent 256 things with a byte. (Remember, a bite is just a pattern. It can represent a letter or a shade of green.) The bits in a byte have numbers. The rightmost bit is bit 0, and the left hand one is bit 7. Those two bits also have names. The rightmost is the least significant bit or lsb. It is least significant, because changing it has the smallest effect on the value. Which is the msb? (Bytes in larger numbers can also be called least significant and most significant.)

Hexadecimal Numbers
Even with the space, 00110111 10110000 is pretty hard to read. Software writers often use a code called hexadecimal to represent binary patterns. Hexadecimal was created by taking the decimal to binary idea and going the other way. Someone added six digits to the normal 0-9 so a number up to 15 can be represented by a single symbol. Since they had to be typed on a normal keyboard, the letters A-F were used. One of these can represent four bits worth, so a byte is written as two hexadecimal digits. 00110111 10110000 becomes 37B0.

Here's a handy table:
Hex binary decimal
0 0000 0
1 0001 1
2 0010 2
3 0011 3
4 0100 4
5 0101 5
6 0110 6
7 0111 7
8 1000 8
9 1001 9
A 1010 10
B 1011 11
C 1100 12
D 1101 13
E 1110 14
F 1111 15

With three different schemes running around, it's easy to confuse numbers. 1000 can translate to a thousand, eight, or four thousand and ninety six. You have to indicate which system you are using. The fact that you still sometimes see an obsolete system called octal (digits 0-7. You can work it out) adds to the potential for confusion. Hexadecimal numbers can be indicated by writing them 1000hex 1000h or 0x1000. Binary numbers can be written 1000bin . Octal numbers were just written with an extra leading 0. Decimal numbers are not indicated, unless there's some possibility of confusion, such as one in a page of hex numbers.

Buss
In electrical systems, a wire that connects to more than two devices is called a buss. Typically you have a power buss that supplies current to all of the parts that need it, and a ground buss that takes the current back to the power supply. (All current paths must be a round trip.)

In computer engineering, the concept of a buss has been expanded to mean a group of wires that carries data around the system. There's usually enough wires to handle one to four bytes. The size of these busses has a big effect on the efficiency of the system. A 32 bit buss can handle numbers twice as long (meaning 2 to the 16th bigger) than a 16 bit buss.

Serial Data
You can send big numbers down a narrow buss if you send it in chunks. If you have an eight bit buss, you can send bytes one after another, and the processor can put the bytes together. This can be down with a single wire buss. Then the bits come one at a time -- this is called serial data transmission.

Memory
A computer wouldn't be much use if it couldn't store data. There have been many schemes for storing data over the years, but the way it's done today involves wiring transistors so they stay on when turned on and stay off when turned off. A transistor can then store a bit. The transistors are organized in groups of 8, so each group can store a byte. A single integrated circuit may have millions of these groups.

Each member of the group is connected to one wire of the data buss. A group can be instructed by some other wires to copy the state of the buss, or to connect their outputs to the buss, so the buss reflects what's in this group. These other wires are in fact a second buss called the address buss. By manipulating the address buss, the central processor can choose which particular group of transistors (or memory location) to read or modify. The number of wires in the address buss determines how many memory locations it could possibly address.

This kind of memory is called RAM for random access memory. Since it depends on transistors to stay on, all data goes away when the power is turned off. Some computers can keep the memory by never really turning off. They have a battery that keeps enough power to the memory transistors that they don't forget.

Another kind of memory is called ROM, for read only memory. There are various types of this, but the most common is like an array of fuses. Any that are blown represent a 0. Nothing can change what's in read only memory, so any program or data in there is available as soon as the computer is turned on.

Which of the following determines the number of bits a computer can transmit at one time?

Which of the following determines the number of bits that the computer can transmit at one time quizlet?

What determines the bit in a computer?

What is called the number of bits that a computer can process at a time?