For example, a transistor sends current to represent two 1’s. How does the hardware know that it’s two 1’s and not one or three? That current exists for a certain amount of time, so how does the hardware time it so that it knows when to separate the constant current into the correct amount of bits, and what is that timing? Or is it not timing at all, but a total sum of current it receives before counting one bit then resetting and waiting for the current to reach that sum again to count another bit? But then, how does it count 0’s if there is no current? Surely that would have to involve some sort of timing? If there is two seconds of no current, how many 0’s is that?
Hopefully I have explained my inquiry sufficiently.
In: Technology
There are many contexts in which hardware uses 1’s and 0’s and, especially if we include older defunct solutions, the answer to your question becomes *many answers*.
For common stuff like a processor or graphics card, there exists a clock. This clock simply jumps between “on” and “off” at a regular speed – the clock rate. This clock tells all of the other components when to move on to the next step; the clock tells it that enough time has passed to start the next thing it’s supposed to do.
For a 3 GHz processor, one second of zero is 3,000,000,000 zeros. Or, if it uses both clock states to step, then 6,000,000,000.
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