Comment on Bit flips: How cosmic rays grounded a fleet of aircraft
Devial@discuss.online 3 days agoA bit IS represented by one or zero. A bit can take the state of charged or not charged. That’s what a bit physically is. In low level code, those states are represented by binary numbers.
Or do you think there’s a actual physical numbers 0 and 1 floating around in your RAM ?
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
The states represent binary numbers, not the other way around.
www.britannica.com/technology/bit-communications
A bit is a binary digit. That’s what “bit” is an abbreviation for. That is, it’s either a 1 or a 0. It’s a logical thing, not a physical thing. It’s a unit of information.
The embodiment of that bit is the physical state of a certain tiny, addressable chunk of silicon. And there could be any of several other embodiments: the position of toggle switches, chalk marks on a board, pits on a metallic surface in a DVD, voltage in a wire at a particular time. The particular embodiment is an engineering choice that is distinct from the information itself.