What is the largest value you can store in eight bits without considering the MSB as a sign bit?
i dont really understand what msb is
- David KLv 61 month ago
255 would be the answer to that. This seems like a homework question.
- husoskiLv 71 month ago
MSB is short for "most significant bit". (It's also used to mean "most significant byte" but that doesn't apply here.)
That's the bit with the greatest numerical weight. With n bits, the least signficant bit has a weight of 1, then next higher bit has a weight of 2, then 4, 8, and so on in powers of 2. The most significant bit has a weight of 2^(n-1), assuming it's just plain binary with no "sign bit" anywhere. Add all those up: 1 + 2 + 4 + ... + 2^(n-1) and you get (2^n) - 1.
So, with 8 bits that's a maximum value of 2^8 - 1 = 256 - 1 = 255.