Let's quickly go over some basics first: a byte consists of 8 bits, numbered from bit 0, the Least Significant Bit (LSB), to bit 7, the Most Significant Bit (MSB). (This is actually formally defined as the BITS_PER_BYTE macro in include/linux/bits.h, along with a few other interesting definitions.)
A register is basically a small piece of memory within the peripheral device; typically, its size, the register bit width, is one of 8, 16, or 32 bits. The device registers provide control, status, and other information and are often programmable. This, in fact, is largely what you as a driver author will do – program the device registers appropriately to make the device do something, and query it.
To flesh out this discussion, let's consider a hypothetical device that has two registers: a status register and a control register, each 8 bits wide. (In the real world, every device...
