Byte

In computers, a byte is a unit of data, consisting of eight bits. All data represented on a computer are composed of them, from e-mails and pictures, to programs and data stored on a hard drive.

Technical definition

In electronics, information is determined by the toggle of two states, usually referred to as 'on' or 'off'. To represent this state, computer scientists use the values of 0 (off) and 1 (on); we refer to this value as a bit.

Each byte is made of eight bits, and can represent any number from 0 to 255. We obtain this number of possible values, which is 256 when including the 0, by raising the possible values of a bit (two) to the power of the length of a byte (eight); thus, 2⁸ = 256 possible values in a byte.

Bytes can be used to represent a countless array of data types, from characters in a string of text, to the contents of a binary executable file. Every file is composed of them.

Sub-units

While basic, byte is not the most commonly used unit of data. Because files are normally many thousands or even billions of times larger than a byte, other terms are used to increase readability. Metric prefixes are added to the word byte, such as kilo for one thousand bytes, mega for one million, giga for one billion, and even tera, which is one trillion.

Conflicting definitions

Traditionally, the computer world has used a value of 1024 instead of 1000 when referring to a kilobyte. The reason for this is that the programmers needed a number compatible with the base of 2, and 1024 is equal to 2 to the 10th power. This, however, is now non-standard; it has recently been replaced with the term kibibyte, abbreviated as KiB.

See also

• Half of a byte (four bits) is referred to as a nibble.
• Two bytes together (sixteen bits) is referred to as a word.