Quote:
Originally Posted by chriscurtis
4^64 is the highest exponential with 8bits (no zero is represented)
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And what does *that* mean? An 8 bit integer can represent values from 0 to 255. That is, up to 2^8 - 1.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chriscurtis
2^256 = 256^16 = 16^32 =(more than 8bits)
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2^256 = 256^32 = 16^64.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chriscurtis
The infinities all disappear since there are no new numbers over 4^64, they can all be counted in terms of these units with two numbers of 8bits long.
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2 8-bit numbers can together represent 65536 separate numbers. You can get as big as you want depending on how you represent that number...for example, you could use one as an integer mantissa and the other as an exponent, and represent non-zero numbers as small as 1^-127 and as big as 255^128, but you're limited to 65536 unique numbers. It's not even big enough to manage my bank account...I generally have more than $655.36 in it, and would prefer to track it at least to the nearest cent.