![]() The complete Unicode character set includes 136,755 characters. Use two bits to track the history of predictions for a branch instead of a single bit Can have 2 states for T or NT instead of 1 state for each Smith, A Study of Branch Prediction Strategies, 1981. The Unicode character set supports about 1900 languages, using 32 modern alphabets and 107 historical alphabets that are no longer in living use. (The closest English sound is the "u" in "lunch.")Īs the use of computers and the Internet spread around the world, people wanted to be able to write Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Kabyle, Russian, Tamil, etc. For example, there is an accented character in the name of the main developer of Snap !, Jens Mönig, who is German. It included an optional eighth bit for error detection, which was taken over to include accented characters in Spanish, French, German, and some other European languages. The first officially recognized character encoding was the seven bit ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) character set. (Another reason is that computer circuitry can most easily deal with widths that are powers of two.)Ĭomputers used six-bit-wide character codes for many years, but to have both UPPER CASE and lower case letters and punctuation requires seven bits. Two-bit means inferior, cheap, worthless, or insignificant. The widespread use of eight-bit ASCII is the main historical reason why the eight-bit byte became standard. Later on, when the American quarter came into use, it got the nickname two bits since it was literally worth two parts of the Spanish dollar. That's how they're used to play music in a stereo. When used in the middle, linear (pink) part of the graph, they're amplifiers a small variation in input voltage produces a large variation in output voltage. Two bits back in the day was American for 25 cents, and then in the UK, it was ‘shave and a haircut, five bob,’ which was, I don’t know, shillings, something in shillings, Calum explained. If there were three flat parts of the curve, maybe we would have three possible values for each wire. This is how transistors are used as switches in a computer. Likewise within the "saturation" region, small input changes don't affect the output voltage this output is interpreted as a one. Within the "cutoff" region, small changes to the input voltage do not change the output voltage at all the output is always zero volts. Don't worry about the details just notice the two blue flat parts of the graph. This is a rough graph of the actual input-output behavior of a transistor. But electrical circuits aren't perfect the input may be a little larger or smaller than it should be. In a digital computer, the input to a transistor is either zero or whatever voltage represents one. Two-bit is always used before the noun it describes.Įxample: That two-bit manager is running this company into the ground.The fundamental building block of computer circuitry is the transistor. It’s still sometimes used this way, especially in negative statements, as in That piece of junk isn’t worth two bits or That job is like a vacation-I’d do it for two bits. It then came to be used in a general way meaning a small amount. As an adjective, 'two-bit' describes something cheap or unworthy. Two bits became an informal way of referring to the value of the 25-cent coin known as the quarter. However, monetary amounts counted in bits were only ever given in multiples of two, as in two bits and six bits. ![]() It’s based on the sense of the word bit that refers to one eighth of a U.S. This sense of two-bit is based on its literal meaning: costing 25 cents. It’s especially used as an insult applied to people who have a high opinion of themselves to call them out as being far inferior in reality.ĭescribing something as two-bit means it’s low-quality. The term is perhaps most commonly used to negatively describe a person considered to be a small-time hack-someone who’s not good at what they do due to having a very low level of talent or skill. Two-bit means inferior, cheap, worthless, or insignificant. ![]()
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