Why octal and hexadecimal numbers use extensively by computers' specialists?

Answer 1

Hexadecimal numbers are used in MAC addresses (hardware addresses) in computers. This gives an unlimited number of possible combinations to computer manufacturers. That way each PC in the world has a unique identifier. Esuka Endeley Hexadecimal is a number system using Base 16. It uses the digits from 0 to 9 and the letters from A to F, A=10, B=11, C=12, D=13, E=14, F=15. It enables very large numbers to be written with fewer characters. As computers have very large memories, addressing specific parts of them becomes a big task. Hexadecimal is used as a way of doing so. Sometimes if your computer crashes you will see an error message showing a number with letters in it. Those letters are always between A and F. Basically what it is saying is that there was a problem in memory at this point.

Hexadecimal is used in many other ways in computers. One very common purpose is for colour codes in web pages. 6 digits are used, with 2 representing the amount of Red, 2 the amount of Green and 2 for the amount of blue. So if you want a lot of Red, but not much blue or green as a mix for your colour, the code could be something like FF0502. FF represents 255. If you do a web design course, specifically learning to use HTML for creating colours on your pages, you will learn more about this.

Answer 2

Any base that is a power of two can be used to notate binary numbers. Base-2 is binary itself, so each binary digit maps to 1 bit of binary data. A base-4 digit maps to exactly 2 bits of binary while a base-8 (octal) digit maps to exactly 3 bits. Hexadecimal (base-16) is convenient because each digit maps to exactly 4 bits of binary, and since a byte is typically 8-bits, we can represent 8 bits of binary using just two hex digits. A hex digit is called a nybble because it is exactly half a byte.

We use hexadecimal whenever we want to represent binary values rather than decimal values. Binary is the only language the machine understands, so everything ultimately has to be converted to binary. While decimal notation is fine when we're dealing with decimal concepts (currency, temperature, distance, and so on), often we need to work at the machine level, setting or unsetting individual bits. For that we use hexadecimal notation.

Answer 3

Octal and hexadecimal numbers are used extensively by computer specialists because octal and hexadecimal are easily converted to and from binary. You simply group the binary bits into groups of 3 or 4 and then convert that group into octal or hexadecimal, or you convert the octal or hexadecimal digit into a group of 3 or 4 binary bits. With practice, you can do this at sight.

Answer 4

Because Hexadecimals are easy to write, remember and most important uses lesser number of characters to write a program. For e.g. Let's take a simple example - To write value of 255, binary number system would take 8 characters (255 (base 10)= 11111111 (base 2)) to punch from keyboard, decimal number system will take 3 key punches and hexadecimal will take only 2 key punches (255 (base 10) = FF (base 16)).

So it is much easier to write program in hexadecimal than any other system.

Answer 5

It's used as a "human friendly" representation of binary coded values

Answer 6

It's a counting system for computers that is easier for people to use than binary (the machine level code for the computer.) 0xFF is easier to deal with than 11111111.

Answer 7

A much more concise representation. 1111 in binary can be represented as F in hex.

Answer 8

its used in ipv6 to expand the number of possible ip addresses