“It’s all 1s and 0s.” People say this when they’re making a joke or a sarcastic remark. When it comes to computers thought, it’s really true. And at the hardware level, that’s all there is. The processor, the memory, various forms of storage, USB, HDMI, and network connections, along with everything else in that cell-phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop only uses 1s and 0s. Bytes provide for the grouping of the 1s and 0s. So they are a big help in keeping them organized. Let’s looks at how they do that.

Bytes are the unit of measure for data and programs stored and used in your computer. Though the byte has existed for a long time in computer history and has taken several forms, it’s current 8 bit length is well settled. Taken either singly or as adjacent groups, bytes are the generally accepted most common way the Bits in a computer are kept organized.

So what’s a bit? A bit is a binary digit; that is it can have only two values. In computers the two values a bit can have are zero (0) and one (1). That’s it, no other choices. A byte is just eight binary bits that are taken together to represent binary numbers. Through various coding schemes the numbers can represent a wide variety of other things like the characters we write with.

The table below shows a single Big-Endian byte showing individual bits of this byte and their associated powers of two. All Bytes of data are in Big-Endian format. There are other bytes, such as program code where Endian formatting does not apply. The decimal values of each power of two is show with each bit for reference. Imagine a line between Bit 3 and Bit 4 is where the byte is sub divided into four bit groups called Nibbles. Little-Endian is a very commonly used byte format. Stay tuned for more on Endians. If you’re curious about the name, do a search on (etymology of endian).

One Big-Endian Byte:

Bit0 Bit1 Bit2 Bit3 Bit4 Bit5 Bit6 Bit7 Power of 2 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 21 Decimal value 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1

Each nibble of a byte can hold a four bit binary number as shown in the following table. If a bit is set to “1” that power of two adds to the value of the nibble. If a bit is set to “0” that power of two does not add to the value of the nibble. A byte which is two nibbles can hold a two digit hexadecimal number. Bits are really all that a computer can use. Programmers and engineers developing computer hardware use hexadecimal to make dealing with the bits easier. In the table below the most significant bit is on the left 20, 21, 22, 23

One Big-Endian Nibble:

Binary

Number Hexidecimal

Value 0000 0 0001 1 0010 2 0011 3 0100 4 0101 5 0110 6 0111 7 1000 8 1001 9 1010 A 1011 B 1100 C 1101 D 1110 E 1111 F

I’ll explain Big-Endian starting with a one byte diagram. The longer lines at the end of this frame are the boundaries of the byte so if you were drawing a group of adjacent bytes it would be clear where one byte left off and another began. The small lines divide the frame into individual locations where each of the eight bits can be shown. The medium line in the middle divides the byte into two equal four bit pieces which are the nibbles. Nibbles also have a long and varied history. I’ve never seen that they have been standardized. However the current well settled view is that nibbles are groups of four bits as I have shown them below. All of these lines only exist as people draw bytes. The lines don’t exist in the computer.

The Upper Nibble and Lower Nibble are labels as they would be used in a Big-Endian byte. In Big-Endian, the most significant digit is on the left end of a number. So the Lower Nibble is the least significant half of the number in the byte. Likewise the least significant bit is on the right LSBit (usually noted as LSB) stands for Least Significant Bit. And the most significant bit is on the left. The Upper Nibble on the left is the most significant half of the number. MSBit (usually noted as MSB) is the most significant bit. This is the same as to how we write decimal numbers with the most significant digit on the left. This is called Big-Endian because the “big end” of the number comes first.

With the byte being able to hold two hexadecimal digits, a byte can hold hexadecimal numbers between 00 and FF (0 to 255 in decimal) So if you are using bytes to represent the characters of a human readable language you just give each character, punctuation mark, etc. a number. (Then of course get everyone to agree with the coding you invented.) This is only one use for bytes. Bytes are also used as program code that your computer runs, numbers for various data you might have, and everything else that inhabits a computer in the CPU, memory, storage, or zooming around on the various buses and interface ports.

As it turns out there are two commonly used byte formats. Little-Endian has been used in the prior examples. Its feature is having the most significant digit on the left and the least significant digit on the right.

There is also a format called Little-Endian. As you might expect it is opposite of Big-Endian with the least significant digit on the left and the most significant digit on the right. This is the opposite of how we write decimal numbers. Little-Endian is not used for the order of bits in a byte, but it is used for the order of bytes in a larger structure. For instance: A large number contained in a Little-Endian Word of two bytes would have the least significant byte on the left. If the two byte number was in Big-Endian, most significant byte would be on the right. Little-Endian is only used in the context of long multi-byte numbers to set the significance order of the bytes in the larger data structure.

There are reasons for using both Big and Little byte ordering and the meaty reasons are beyond the scope of this article. However, Little-Endian tends to be used in microprocessors. The x86-64 processors in most PCs use the Little-Endian byte format. Though the later generations do have special instructions that provide limited use of Big-Endian format. The Big-Endian byte format is widely used in networking and notably in those big Z computers. Now you’re not necessarily limited to one or the other. The newer ARM processors can use either Endian format. Devices like microprocessors that can use both Big-Endian and Little Endian byte ordering are sometimes referred to as Bi-Endian.

Well, sometimes you really need more than one byte to hold a number. To that end there are longer formats available that are composed of multiple bytes. For instance: The x86-64 processors Have Words which are 16 bits or 2 bytes that happen to be lined up next to each other head to tail, so to speak. They also have Double Words (32 bits or 4 bytes), and Quad Words (64 bits or 8 bytes). Now these are just examples of data forms made available by the processor hardware.

Programmers working with languages have many more ways to organize the bits and bytes. When the program is ready, a compiler or another mechanism converts the way that the program has bits and bytes organized into data forms that the CPU hardware can deal with.