BCD coding scheme uses _____ bits to code decimal digits.

Question

Prepp Team · Accepted Answer

Understanding BCD Coding Scheme Bits

The question asks about the number of bits utilized by the BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) coding scheme to represent individual decimal digits.

What is BCD Coding?

BCD is a way to represent decimal numbers (0 through 9) using binary code. Unlike standard binary conversion where a number like 12 is represented as 1100, in BCD, each decimal digit is encoded separately. For example, the decimal number 12 would be represented as 0001 0010 in BCD, where 0001 is the BCD code for 1 and 0010 is the BCD code for 2.

Bits Used in BCD

To represent each decimal digit from 0 to 9, the BCD coding scheme requires a specific number of bits. Let's look at the representation:

Decimal 0 is represented as 0000 in BCD.
Decimal 1 is represented as 0001 in BCD.
Decimal 2 is represented as 0010 in BCD.
...and so on, up to...
Decimal 9 is represented as 1001 in BCD.

Observing these representations, we can see that each decimal digit requires exactly 4 bits to be encoded in the standard BCD format. These 4 bits correspond to the binary weights 8-4-2-1.