The Art of Assembly Language, 2nd Edition

2.2 The Hexadecimal Numbering System

Unfortunately, binary numbers are verbose. To represent the value 202₁₀ requires eight binary digits. The decimal version requires only three decimal digits and thus represents numbers much more compactly than in binary. This fact is not lost on the engineers who design binary computer systems. When dealing with large values, binary numbers quickly become unwieldy. Unfortunately, the computer "thinks" in binary, so most of the time it is convenient to use the binary numbering system. Although we can convert between decimal and binary, the conversion is not a trivial task. The hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system solves many of the problems inherent in the binary system. Hexadecimal numbers offer the two features ...