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Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a character of text in the computer, which depended on computer hardware architecture, but today it almost always means eight bits – that is, an octet. An 8-bit byte can represent 256 (2 8) distinct values, such as non-negative integers from 0 to 255, or signed integers from −128 to ...
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. A kilobyte may refer to either 1000 or 1024 bytes. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix kilo as a multiplication factor of 1000 (10 3); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. [1] The internationally recommended unit symbol for the kilobyte is kB. [1]
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits.Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer [1] [2] and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures.
In the early days of computing, it was used for differing numbers of bits based on convention and computer hardware design, but today means 8 bits. A more accurate, but less commonly used name for 8 bits is octet. Commonly, a decimal SI metric prefix (such as kilo-) is used with bit and byte to express larger sizes (kilobit, kilobyte). But ...
On most modern computers, this is an eight bit string. Because the definition of a byte is related to the number of bits composing a character, some older computers have used a different bit length for their byte. [2] In many computer architectures, the byte is the smallest addressable unit, the atom of addressability, say. For example, even ...
In programming languages such as C, a bitwise operation operates on binary strings as though they are vectors of bits, rather than interpreting them as binary numbers. Data transfer rates are usually measured in decimal SI multiples. For example, a channel capacity may be specified as 8 kbit/s = 8 kb/s = 1 kB/s.
The 5.25-inch diskette sold with the IBM PC AT could hold 1200 × 1024 = 1 228 800 bytes, and thus was marketed as "1200 KB" with the binary sense of "KB". [40] However, the capacity was also quoted "1.2 MB", [ 41 ] which was a hybrid decimal and binary notation, since the "M" meant 1000 × 1024.
The largest possible address size, used to designate a location in memory, is typically a hardware word (here, "hardware word" means the full-sized natural word of the processor, as opposed to any other definition used). Documentation for older computers with fixed word size commonly states memory sizes in words rather than bytes or characters.