CS 241 - Definitions

Definitions §

Definitions I learned in the class, not a comprehensive list

• Nibble - 4 bits, such as 1011
• Word - Machine-specific grouping of bytes. In CS 241 a word is 4 bytes (32 bits)
• Most Significant Bit (MSB) - Leftmost bit
• Least Significant Bit (LSB) - Rightmost bit

Fun Facts §

Bytes represent:

• Numbers
• Characters
• Garbage in memory
• CPU instructions
• Audio, videos, etc.

Context matters to interpret binary data - Seems like a point that’s emphasized in the slides a lot