Why is the smallest value that can be stored is a byte (8 bits) and not a bit (1 bit)?

Question

Why is the smallest value that can be stored in bytes (8 bits) and not a bit (1 bit) in memory? Even booleans are stored in bytes. Will we ever beat the smallest number to 32 or 64 bits, for example, register on the processor?

Answer 1

Basic processor access methods are limited by the size of the smallest register used. On most architectures, this size is 8 bits. You can use a smaller portion of them; for example, C has a bit-field function in structures that allows you to combine fields that should only be a specific bit length. Access still requires the entire byte to be read.

Some old exotic architectures did have different "word sizes." On these machines, 10 bits can be the total size.

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Answer 2

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Answer 3

Since computers address memory at the byte level, so anything smaller than a byte is not addressed.