- Packing lots of small pieces of information into a single memory word - for example, 3-3-2 bit RGB [1] - Interacting with hardware that uses certain bits in

- Packing lots of small pieces of information into a single memory word - for example, 3-3-2 bit RGB [1] - Interacting with hardware that uses certain bits in a register to control behavior - for example, Arduino digital ports [2] - Doing arithmetic extra-fast with numbers that are powers of two - modulo becomes bitwise-and, division and multiplication become shifts [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes#3-3-2_bit_RGB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_pale... [2] http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/PortManipulation http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/PortManipulation