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The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. 1 byte (B) = 8 bits (bit).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.
The byte has been a commonly used unit of measure for much of the information age to refer to a number of bits. 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.
The binary value of all eight bits set (or activated) is 11111111 2, equal to the hexadecimal value FF 16, the decimal value 255 10, and the octal value 377 8. One octet can be used to represent decimal values ranging from 0 to 255. The term octet (symbol: o [nb 1]) is often used when the use of byte might be ambiguous.
An 8-bit register can store 2 8 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 8 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 255 (2 8 − 1) for representation as an binary number, and −128 (−1 × 2 7) through 127 (2 7 − 1) for representation as two's complement.
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 127. The IEEE 1541-2002 standard specifies "B" (upper case) as the symbol for byte (IEC 80000-13 uses "o" for octet in French, but also allows "B" in English). Bytes, or multiples thereof, are almost always used ...
The number of colors available in a GIF or a 256-color (8-bit) bitmap. The number of characters in extended ASCII [3] and Latin-1. [4] The number of columns available in a Microsoft Excel worksheet until Excel 2007. [5] The split-screen level in Pac-Man, which results from the use of a single byte to store the internal level counter.
The ISQ symbols for the bit and byte are bit and B, respectively.In the context of data-rate units, one byte consists of 8 bits, and is synonymous with the unit octet.The abbreviation bps is often used to mean bit/s, so that when a 1 Mbps connection is advertised, it usually means that the maximum achievable bandwidth is 1 Mbit/s (one million bits per second), which is 0.125 MB/s (megabyte per ...
A group of eight bits is called one byte, but historically the size of the byte is not strictly defined. [2] Frequently, half, full, double and quadruple words consist of a number of bytes which is a low power of two. A string of four bits is usually a nibble.