Internet News Internet Investing Internet Technology Windows Internet Tech. Y Related Terms 32-bit address space bit stuffing Class C network kilobit megabit nibble octet quantum computing qubit register BIT Short for bi nary digi t , the smallest unit of information on a machine. The term was first used in 1946 by John Tukey, a leading statistician and adviser to five presidents.
More meaningful information is obtained by combining consecutive bits into larger units.
For example, a byte is composed of 8 consecutive bits. Computers are sometimes classified by the number of bits they can process at one time or by the number of bits they use to represent addresses . These two values are not always the same, which leads to confusion. For example, classifying a computer as a 32-bit machine might mean that its data registers are 32 bits wide or that it uses 32 bits to identify each address in memory . Whereas larger registers make a computer faster, using more bits for addresses enables a machine to support larger programs .