Examples of such operators include +, - and *. By contrast, bitwise operators can check and manipulate each individual bit within a byte, with each bit carrying a single binary value of either 0 or 1.

The half adder now is: We can reduce the gate count considerably by introducing an XOR gate to directly provide the summing operation. The XOR operation is represented by the math symbol ‘⊕ ...

This takes four cycles and requires two registers. Toggling bits is such a rudimentary operation I was surprised there wasn’t a command to XOR bits directly so I started searching around.