paritybit
n.
The bit within a data structure which is assigned a value of 1 or 0 so as to make the parity{7} of the data structure odd or even. Data structures may or may not have parity bits , dpending on whether the system does or does not perform parity checking . The most commonly used parity bit is the eigth (higher-order) bit of a byte, which is used when data transmission uses only the 7 lower-order bits of each byte as significant data; some memory systems use a ninth bit as a parity bit for each eight bits (one byte) of significant data in memory.
|