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Byte
A byte is composed of 8 bits. It is the most commonly used
unit for storage. A byte allows your computer to store characters, numbers,
and data. Combining a string of bytes is what gives us megabytes, kilobytes,
and etc.
So now you’re saying, "that’s great but what does a byte mean
to me." Well, have you ever wondered what those weird abbreviations were
on the specs for your computer data capacity, empty space on your hard
drive, space on a CDROM, or space on a floppy disk. Or when you click to
download a file and it starts speaking to you in Latin saying, "KB/sec
or bytes/sec". Well, here is the answer. The abbreviation on your hardware
or brochure is describing the capacity of the hardware to store data. The
KB/sec or bytes/sec is describing to you the transfer rate of the file.
In comparison, the larger the number preceding the abbreviation, the better.
Although, the relationship between Byte, KB, MB, and GB are different.
A kilobyte is equal to 1,024 bytes. (KB)
A megabyte is equal to 1,048,576 bytes. (MB)
A gigabyte is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes. (GB)
Therefore, to arrange them from smallest to largest, they are
ordered:
Byte--KB--MB--GB
Note: The number of bits in a byte varies
by chip architecture. A byte may consist of 9 bits on 36-bit computers
(the 9th bit is used for parity checking). Although, older architectures
used a byte to represent 6 or 7 bits The PDP-10 and IBM 7030 supported
bytes that were actually bit-fields of 1 to 36 (or 64) bits. Luckily, this
usage is now obsolete. Therefore, 8-bit chip architecture is the most common
and will be found in almost all of the computers today.
Now for lighter side of computing. Here is an extra addition
on the word Byte.
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