The Computer Revolution/Hardware/Binary
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[edit] Binary Measuring Capacity
Binary capacity is measured by bits (binary digits) and bytes.
The binary system has only two digits, the 0 and the 1. The capacity is referred to by bits and bytes. A group of 8 bits is equal to one byte. There are 256 combinations of 8 bits available.
A kilobyte (KB)is equal to 1,000 bytes. A megabyte (MB)is equal to 1 million bytes. 1 MB equals about 500 pages of text. A gigabyte (GB)is equal to 1 billion bytes. A Terabyte is equal to 1 trillion bytes. 1 TB is about 500 million pages of text. A Petabyte is equal to 1 quadrillion bytes. And the most is the Exabyte which equals 1 quintillion bytes.
Almost all digital computers are binary computers. The 0’s and 1’s stand for different information that can be represented in a variety of different ways. Converting the 0’s and 1’s to information able to be understood is called digital data representation. The computer can only read directions given in binary form, which makes binary the computers natural language.
The Binary Code is the syntax that programmer will use to write programs. The Binary Code is written only by using digits of 0’s and 1’s to write data to perform today’s applications. For example if you have written 0100100001001001 it would stand for the word “HI”. With the use of the Binary Code you are able to write text data such as ASCII, EBCDIC, and Unicode. These codes are used to represent all characters that can appear in data such as numbers, letters, and special characters and symbols like the dollar sign, comma, percent symbol and many mathematical characters.
In this way, software programs must also be represented by 0s and 1s. Machine language is also one of the binary code to convert the instruction before any program instruction is executed by computer.
