For question related to hardware allowing access to individual bits.
Bit banding is a feature of some CPUs which aliases normal byte addressable memory to access an individual bit. These operation turn a regular 'read-modify-write' to a single atomic write at the aliased address.
Typically, the primary byte storage is aliased to eight location where each affects a single bit. This is expensive to address space, so the feature is common to lower end devices (with minimal RAM).
