Why do storage and memory follow a pattern of 2 (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and so on)?
In: Technology
To make it more basic than some of the great answers here, a computer only can think of something as on or off. It could count from 0-255 with 255 light switches, but it’s easier to make the first one worth 1, the next one worth 2, the third one worth 4, the next worth 8, then 16, 32, 64, and 128. By flipping those 8 switches on and off you can represent any number from 0-255. (Remember how the first Zelda capped out at 255 rupees? Have you ever noticed IP addresses are 4 numbers between 0 and 255? Same logic applies.)
But computer hardware gets more efficient, so we can keep adding switches. Using the same architecture we can add a 256 switch and a 512 switch. Now I can get any number between 0 and 1023. Every time we add a new switch, it’s the sum of all the switches that came before it +1. Well we kept doing that over and over and over again until we got some pretty big banks of switches compared to what we had 30 years ago.
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