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What is a Byte?
What is a Byte?
A byte is a fundamental unit of measurement in computer science that is used to store characters like letters, numbers, or symbols. One byte is equal to 8 bits that can hold one typed character, e.g., âSâ, â2â, or â$â. A byte is represented by an uppercase "B".
Example: The binary sequence 10100101 represents one byte. This sequence contains 8 bits (1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1).
- Byte (B) is the basic unit of digital information.
- A byte consists of 8 bits.
- A byte represents one character of text, such as a letter or number.
- The size of a single byte is quite small, but multiple bytes can store larger amounts of data.
- For example, a simple text file might be just a few bytes in size.
- Larger files, such as documents, images, or audio, require significantly more bytes.
- For instance, 1,024 bytes make up 1 kilobyte (KB).
How Many Bits are in a Byte?
A bit, shown as a lowercase "b," is the smallest storage unit and holds one binary digit. A byte consists of eight bits, but this number can vary depending on the system hardware.
Initially bytes are ranged from one to six bits but the shift to the current eight-bit standard came later. Werner Buchholz coined the term "byte" in 1956 when working on IBM's Stretch computer, and Fred Brooks helped to establish this standard.
Convert Bits to Byte
The following shows the process how to convert bits into bytes:
Formula: bits / 8 = Bytes
Example: convert 32 bits to bytes
Calculation: 32 bits / 8 = 4 Bytes
result: 32 bits is equal to 4 Bytes
Multiple-byte Units
The binary and decimal systems are separated into different tables and represent two distinct methods of calculating data sizes −
Decimal (Base-10)
- This system uses multiples of 1000 (10^3).
- For example, 1 kilobyte (kB) is 1000 bytes, 1 megabyte (MB) is 1,000,000 bytes, and so on.
- The decimal system is more commonly used by manufacturers of storage devices like hard drives and USB drives.
Binary (Base-2 or IEC Standard)
- This system uses multiples of 1024 (2^10).
- For instance, 1 kibibyte (KiB) is 1024 bytes, 1 mebibyte (MiB) is 1,048,576 bytes, etc.
- The binary system is more accurate for calculating memory sizes in computing environments like RAM, where data is processed in powers of two.
Decimal
| Value | Metric |
|---|---|
| 1000 | kB - kilobyte |
| 1000^2 | MB - megabyte |
| 1000^3 | GB - gigabyte |
| 1000^4 | TB - terabyte |
| 1000^5 | PB - petabyte |
| 1000^6 | EB - exabyte |
| 1000^7 | ZB - zettabyte |
| 1000^8 | YB - yottabyte |
| 1000^9 | RB - ronnabyte |
| 1000^10 | QB - quettabyte |
Binary
| Value | IEC | Memory |
|---|---|---|
| 1024 | KiB - kibibyte | KB |
| 1024^2 | MiB - mebibyte | MB |
| 1024^3 | GiB - gibibyte | GB |
| 1024^4 | TiB - tebibyte | TB |
| 1024^5 | PiB - pebibyte | â |
| 1024^6 | EiB - exbibyte | â |
| 1024^7 | ZiB - zebibyte | â |
| 1024^8 | YiB - yobibyte | â |
| 1024^9 | RiB - robibyte | â |
| 1024^10 | QiB - quebibyte | â |
Note − IEC stands for the International Electro technical Commission.