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Byte

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</style><div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">This article is about the unit of information. For other uses, see <a href="Byte_(disambiguation)" class="mw-disambig" title="Byte (disambiguation)">Byte (disambiguation)</a>.</div>

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</style><table class="infobox ib-unit"><tbody><tr><th colspan="2" class="infobox-above">byte</th></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label"><a href="System_of_units_of_measurement" title="System of units of measurement">Unit system</a></th><td class="infobox-data">unit derived from <a href="Bit" title="Bit">bit</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">Unit of</th><td class="infobox-data">digital information, data size</td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">Symbol</th><td class="infobox-data">B, <a href="Octet_(computing)" title="Octet (computing)">o</a> (when 8 bits)</td></tr></tbody></table><style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r1236303919">

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The byte is a <a href="Units_of_information" title="Units of information">unit of digital information</a> that most commonly consists of eight <a href="Bit" title="Bit">bits</a>. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single <a href="Character_(computing)" title="Character (computing)">character</a> of text in a computer<a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1962-1">[1]</a><a href="#cite_note-Bemer_1959-2">[2]</a> and for this reason it is the smallest <a href="Address_space" title="Address space">addressable</a> unit of <a href="Computer_memory" title="Computer memory">memory</a> in many <a href="Computer_architecture" title="Computer architecture">computer architectures</a>. To disambiguate arbitrarily sized bytes from the common <a href="8-bit_computing" title="8-bit computing">8-bit</a> definition, <a href="Computer_network" title="Computer network">network</a> protocol documents such as the <a href="Internet_Protocol" title="Internet Protocol">Internet Protocol</a> (<style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r1238218222">

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</style><a href="RFC_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="RFC (identifier)">RFC</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc791">791</a>) refer to an 8-bit byte as an <a href="Octet_(computing)" title="Octet (computing)">octet</a>.<a href="#cite_note-3">[3]</a> Those bits in an octet are usually counted with numbering from 0 to 7 or 7 to 0 depending on the <a href="Bit_numbering" title="Bit numbering">bit endianness</a>.

The size of the byte has historically been <a href="Computer_hardware" title="Computer hardware">hardware</a>-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used.<a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_1-4">[4]</a><a href="#cite_note-CDC_1965_3600-5">[5]</a><a href="#cite_note-Rao_1989-6">[6]</a><a href="#cite_note-Tafel_1971-7">[7]</a> The <a href="Six-bit_character_code" title="Six-bit character code">six-bit character code</a> was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had <a href="Word_(computer_architecture)" title="Word (computer architecture)">memory words</a> of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 six-bit bytes, and persisted, in legacy systems, into the twenty-first century. In this era, bit groupings in the instruction stream were often referred to as <a href="Syllable_(computing)" title="Syllable (computing)">syllables</a><a href="#cite_note-8">[a]</a> or slab, before the term byte became common.

The modern <a href="De_facto_standard" title="De facto standard">de facto standard</a> of eight bits, as documented in ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993, is a convenient <a href="Power_of_two" title="Power of two">power of two</a> permitting the <a href="Binary_number" title="Binary number">binary-encoded</a> values 0 through 255 for one byte, as 2 to the power of 8 is 256.<a href="#cite_note-ISO_IEC_2382-1_1993-9">[8]</a> The international standard <a href="IEC_80000-13" class="mw-redirect" title="IEC 80000-13">IEC 80000-13</a> codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers commonly optimize for this usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the 8-bit byte.<a href="#cite_note-CHM_1964-10">[9]</a> Modern architectures typically use 32- or 64-bit words, built of four or eight bytes, respectively.

The unit symbol for the byte was designated as the upper-case letter B by the <a href="International_Electrotechnical_Commission" title="International Electrotechnical Commission">International Electrotechnical Commission</a> (IEC) and <a href="Institute_of_Electrical_and_Electronics_Engineers" title="Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers">Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers</a> (IEEE).<a href="#cite_note-MIXF-11">[10]</a> Internationally, the unit <a href="Octet_(computing)" title="Octet (computing)">octet</a> explicitly defines a sequence of eight bits, eliminating the potential ambiguity of the term "byte".<a href="#cite_note-TCPIP-12">[11]</a><a href="#cite_note-ISO_2382-4-13">[12]</a> The symbol for octet, 'o', also conveniently eliminates the ambiguity in the symbol 'B' between byte and <a href="Decibel" title="Decibel">bel</a>.

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Etymology_and_history">Etymology and history </h2></div>

The term byte was coined by <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Werner Buchholz</a> in June 1956,<a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_1-4">[4]</a><a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1977-14">[13]</a><a href="#cite_note-Timeline_1956-15">[14]</a><a href="#cite_note-16">[b]</a> during the early design phase for the <a href="IBM_7030" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM 7030">IBM Stretch</a><a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_2-17">[15]</a><a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_3-18">[16]</a><a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1962-1">[1]</a><a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1977-14">[13]</a><a href="#cite_note-Timeline_1956-15">[14]</a><a href="#cite_note-ESR-19">[17]</a><a href="#cite_note-Bemer_2000-20">[18]</a> computer, which had addressing to the bit and variable field length (VFL) instructions with a byte size encoded in the instruction.<a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1977-14">[13]</a> It is a deliberate respelling of <a href="Bite" class="mw-redirect" title="Bite">bite</a> to avoid accidental mutation to <a href="Bit" title="Bit">bit</a>.<a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1962-1">[1]</a><a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1977-14">[13]</a><a href="#cite_note-Blaauw_1959-21">[19]</a><a href="#cite_note-22">[c]</a>

Another origin of byte for bit groups smaller than a computer's word size, and in particular groups of <a href="Nibble_(computing)" class="mw-redirect" title="Nibble (computing)">four bits</a>, is on record by Louis G. Dooley, who claimed he coined the term while working with <a href="Jules_Schwartz" title="Jules Schwartz">Jules Schwartz</a> and Dick Beeler on an air defense system called <a href="Experimental_SAGE_Subsector" title="Experimental SAGE Subsector">SAGE</a> at <a href="MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory" title="MIT Lincoln Laboratory">MIT Lincoln Laboratory</a> in 1956 or 1957, which was jointly developed by <a href="Rand_Corporation" class="mw-redirect" title="Rand Corporation">Rand</a>, MIT, and IBM.<a href="#cite_note-Dooley_1995_Byte-23">[20]</a><a href="#cite_note-Ram_Byte-24">[21]</a> Later on, Schwartz's language <a href="JOVIAL" title="JOVIAL">JOVIAL</a> actually used the term, but the author recalled vaguely that it was derived from <a href="AN/FSQ-31" class="mw-redirect" title="AN/FSQ-31">AN/FSQ-31</a>.<a href="#cite_note-Schwartz_Brooks_ACM-25">[22]</a><a href="#cite_note-Ram_Byte-24">[21]</a>

Early computers used a variety of four-bit <a href="Binary-coded_decimal" title="Binary-coded decimal">binary-coded decimal</a> (BCD) representations and the <a href="Sixbit" class="mw-redirect" title="Sixbit">six-bit</a> codes for printable graphic patterns common in the <a href="U.S._Army" class="mw-redirect" title="U.S. Army">U.S. Army</a> (<a href="FIELDATA" class="mw-redirect" title="FIELDATA">FIELDATA</a>) and <a href="United_States_Navy" title="United States Navy">Navy</a>. These representations included alphanumeric characters and special graphical symbols. These sets were expanded in 1963 to seven bits of coding, called the <a href="American_Standard_Code_for_Information_Interchange" class="mw-redirect" title="American Standard Code for Information Interchange">American Standard Code for Information Interchange</a> (ASCII) as the <a href="Federal_Information_Processing_Standard" class="mw-redirect" title="Federal Information Processing Standard">Federal Information Processing Standard</a>, which replaced the incompatible teleprinter codes in use by different branches of the U.S. government and universities during the 1960s. ASCII included the distinction of upper- and lowercase alphabets and a set of <a href="Control_character" title="Control character">control characters</a> to facilitate the transmission of written language as well as printing device functions, such as page advance and line feed, and the physical or logical control of data flow over the transmission media.<a href="#cite_note-Bemer_2000-20">[18]</a> During the early 1960s, while also active in ASCII standardization, IBM simultaneously introduced in its product line of <a href="System/360" class="mw-redirect" title="System/360">System/360</a> the eight-bit <a href="Extended_Binary_Coded_Decimal_Interchange_Code" class="mw-redirect" title="Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code">Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code</a> (EBCDIC), an expansion of their <a href="Six-bit_binary-coded_decimal" class="mw-redirect" title="Six-bit binary-coded decimal">six-bit binary-coded decimal</a> (BCDIC) representations<a href="#cite_note-26">[d]</a> used in earlier card punches.<a href="#cite_note-ibm.com-27">[23]</a>

The prominence of the System/360 led to the ubiquitous adoption of the eight-bit storage size,<a href="#cite_note-Bemer_2000-20">[18]</a><a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_3-18">[16]</a><a href="#cite_note-Buchholz_1977-14">[13]</a> while in detail the EBCDIC and ASCII encoding schemes are different.

In the early 1960s, <a href="AT%26T" title="AT&T">AT&T</a> introduced <a href="Digital_telephony" class="mw-redirect" title="Digital telephony">digital telephony</a> on long-distance <a href="Trunk_line" class="mw-redirect" title="Trunk line">trunk lines</a>. These used the eight-bit <a href="%CE%9C-law_algorithm" title="Μ-law algorithm">μ-law encoding</a>. This large investment promised to reduce transmission costs for eight-bit data.

In Volume 1 of <a href="The_Art_of_Computer_Programming" title="The Art of Computer Programming">The Art of Computer Programming</a> (first published in 1968), <a href="Donald_Knuth" title="Donald Knuth">Donald Knuth</a> uses byte in his hypothetical <a href="MIX_(abstract_machine)" title="MIX (abstract machine)">MIX</a> computer to denote a unit which "contains an unspecified amount of information ... capable of holding at least 64 distinct values ... at most 100 distinct values. On a binary computer a byte must therefore be composed of six bits".<a href="#cite_note-Knuth-1-28">[24]</a> He notes that "Since 1975 or so, the word byte has come to mean a sequence of precisely eight binary digits...When we speak of bytes in connection with MIX we shall confine ourselves to the former sense of the word, harking back to the days when bytes were not yet standardized."<a href="#cite_note-Knuth-1-28">[24]</a>

The development of <a href="Eight-bit" class="mw-redirect" title="Eight-bit">eight-bit</a> <a href="Microprocessor" title="Microprocessor">microprocessors</a> in the 1970s popularized this storage size. Microprocessors such as the <a href="Intel_8080" title="Intel 8080">Intel 8080</a>, the direct predecessor of the <a href="Intel_8086" title="Intel 8086">8086</a>, could also perform a small number of operations on the <a href="4bit" class="mw-redirect" title="4bit">four-bit</a> pairs in a byte, such as the decimal-add-adjust (DAA) instruction. A four-bit quantity is often called a <a href="Nibble" title="Nibble">nibble</a>, also nybble, which is conveniently represented by a single <a href="Hexadecimal" title="Hexadecimal">hexadecimal</a> digit.

The term <a href="Octet_(computing)" title="Octet (computing)">octet</a> unambiguously specifies a size of eight bits.<a href="#cite_note-Bemer_2000-20">[18]</a><a href="#cite_note-ISO_2382-4-13">[12]</a> It is used extensively in <a href="Protocol_(computing)" class="mw-redirect" title="Protocol (computing)">protocol</a> definitions.

Historically, the term octad or octade was used to denote eight bits as well at least in Western Europe;<a href="#cite_note-Williams_1969-29">[25]</a><a href="#cite_note-Philips_1971-30">[26]</a> however, this usage is no longer common. The exact origin of the term is unclear, but it can be found in British, Dutch, and German sources of the 1960s and 1970s, and throughout the documentation of <a href="Philips" title="Philips">Philips</a> mainframe computers.

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Unit_symbol">Unit symbol</h2></div>

The unit symbol for the byte is specified in <a href="IEC_80000-13" class="mw-redirect" title="IEC 80000-13">IEC 80000-13</a>, <a href="IEEE_1541" title="IEEE 1541">IEEE 1541</a> and the Metric Interchange Format<a href="#cite_note-MIXF-11">[10]</a> as the upper-case character B.

In the <a href="International_System_of_Quantities" title="International System of Quantities">International System of Quantities</a> (ISQ), B is also the symbol of the <a href="Bel_(acoustics)" class="mw-redirect" title="Bel (acoustics)">bel</a>, a unit of logarithmic power ratio named after <a href="Alexander_Graham_Bell" title="Alexander Graham Bell">Alexander Graham Bell</a>, creating a conflict with the IEC specification. However, little danger of confusion exists, because the bel is a rarely used unit. It is used primarily in its decadic fraction, the <a href="Decibel" title="Decibel">decibel</a> (dB), for <a href="Signal_strength" class="mw-redirect" title="Signal strength">signal strength</a> and <a href="Sound_pressure_level" class="mw-redirect" title="Sound pressure level">sound pressure level</a> measurements, while a unit for one-tenth of a byte, the decibyte, and other fractions, are only used in derived units, such as transmission rates.

The lowercase letter o for <a href="Octet_(computing)" title="Octet (computing)">octet</a> is defined as the symbol for octet in IEC 80000-13 and is commonly used in languages such as <a href="French_language" title="French language">French</a><a href="#cite_note-IEC_Binary-31">[27]</a> and <a href="Romanian_language" title="Romanian language">Romanian</a>, and is also combined with metric prefixes for multiples, for example ko and Mo.

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Multiple-byte_units">Multiple-byte units</h2></div>

<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">"EiB" and "Exabyte" redirect here. For the company, see <a href="Exabyte_Corporation" title="Exabyte Corporation">Exabyte Corporation</a>. For other uses, see <a href="EIB_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="EIB (disambiguation)">EIB (disambiguation)</a>.</div>

<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">"Zettabytes" redirects here. For the fictional band "The Zetta Bytes", see <a href="Pixel_Perfect" title="Pixel Perfect">Pixel Perfect</a>.</div>

<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see <a href="Yottabyte_(disambiguation)" class="mw-disambig" title="Yottabyte (disambiguation)">Yottabyte (disambiguation)</a>, <a href="KIB_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="KIB (disambiguation)">KIB (disambiguation)</a>, <a href="MIB_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="MIB (disambiguation)">MIB (disambiguation)</a>, <a href="GIB_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="GIB (disambiguation)">GIB (disambiguation)</a>, <a href="TIB_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="TIB (disambiguation)">TIB (disambiguation)</a>, <a href="PIB_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="PIB (disambiguation)">PIB (disambiguation)</a>, <a href="Zib_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="Zib (disambiguation)">Zib (disambiguation)</a>, and <a href="RIB_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="RIB (disambiguation)">RIB (disambiguation)</a>.</div>

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</style> <a class="mw-selflink-fragment" href="#Multiple-byte_units">Multiple-byte units</a>

</th></tr>

<tr>

<th colspan="3" style="background-color:#ccf; text-align:center;"><a href="Decimal" title="Decimal">Decimal</a>

</th></tr>

<tr>

<th style="background-color:#ddf; text-align:center; padding:0;">Value

</th>

<th colspan="2" style="background-color:#ddf; text-align:center; padding:0"><a href="Metric_prefix" title="Metric prefix">Metric</a>

</th></tr>

<tr>

<td>1000

</td>

<td><a href="Kilobyte" title="Kilobyte">kilobyte</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10002

</td>

<td><a href="Megabyte" title="Megabyte">megabyte</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10003

</td>

<td><a href="Gigabyte" title="Gigabyte">gigabyte</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10004

</td>

<td>terabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10005

</td>

<td>petabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10006

</td>

<td>exabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10007

</td>

<td>zettabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10008

</td>

<td>yottabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10009

</td>

<td>ronnabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>100010

</td>

<td>quettabyte

</td></tr></tbody></table>

</td>

<th colspan="5" style="background-color:#ccf; text-align:center;"><a href="Binary_prefix" title="Binary prefix">Binary</a>

</th></tr>

<tr>

<th style="background-color:#ddf; text-align:center; padding:0;">Value

</th>

</th>

/* start https://en.wikipedia.org/ */

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000003F-QINU`"'

/* end https://en.wikipedia.org/ */

</style>Memory</a>

</th></tr>

<tr>

<td>1024

</td>

<td>kibibyte

</td>

<td>kilobyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10242

</td>

<td>mebibyte

</td>

<td>megabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10243

</td>

<td>gibibyte

</td>

<td>gigabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10244

</td>

<td>tebibyte

</td>

<td>terabyte

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10245

</td>

<td>pebibyte

</td>

<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">—

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10246

</td>

<td>exbibyte

</td>

<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">—

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10247

</td>

<td>zebibyte

</td>

<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">—

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10248

</td>

<td>yobibyte

</td>

<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">—

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>10249

</td>

<td>robibyte

</td>

<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">—

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>102410

</td>

<td>quebibyte

</td>

<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">—

</td></tr></tbody></table>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td colspan="5" style="background-color:#ddf;text-align:center;"><a href="Orders_of_magnitude_(data)" title="Orders of magnitude (data)">Orders of magnitude of data</a>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

More than one system exists to define <a href="Unit_multiple" class="mw-redirect" title="Unit multiple">unit multiples</a> based on the byte. Some systems are based on <a href="Power_of_10" title="Power of 10">powers of 10</a>, following the <a href="International_System_of_Units" title="International System of Units">International System of Units</a> (SI), which defines for example the prefix <a href="Kilo-" title="Kilo-">kilo</a> as 1000 (103); other systems are based on <a href="Power_of_two" title="Power of two">powers of two</a>. Nomenclature for these systems has led to confusion. Systems based on powers of 10 use standard <a href="SI_prefix" class="mw-redirect" title="SI prefix">SI prefixes</a> (<a href="Kilo-" title="Kilo-">kilo</a>, <a href="Mega-" title="Mega-">mega</a>, <a href="Giga-" title="Giga-">giga</a>, ...) and their corresponding symbols (k, M, G, ...). Systems based on powers of 2, however, might use binary prefixes (kibi, mebi, gibi, ...) and their corresponding symbols (Ki, Mi, Gi, ...) or they might use the prefixes K, M, and G, creating ambiguity when the prefixes M or G are used.

While the difference between the decimal and binary interpretations is relatively small for the kilobyte (about 2% smaller than the kibibyte), the systems deviate increasingly as units grow larger (the relative deviation grows by 2.4% for each three orders of magnitude). For example, a power-of-10-based terabyte is about 9% smaller than power-of-2-based tebibyte.

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Units_based_on_powers_of_10">Units based on powers of 10</h3></div>

Definition of prefixes using powers of 10—in which 1 kilobyte (symbol kB) is defined to equal 1,000 bytes—is recommended by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).<a href="#cite_note-NIST-32">[28]</a> The IEC standard defines eight such multiples, up to 1 yottabyte (YB), equal to 10008 bytes.<a href="#cite_note-33">[29]</a> The additional prefixes ronna- for 10009 and quetta- for 100010 were adopted by the <a href="International_Bureau_of_Weights_and_Measures" title="International Bureau of Weights and Measures">International Bureau of Weights and Measures</a> (BIPM) in 2022.<a href="#cite_note-34">[30]</a><a href="#cite_note-35">[31]</a>

This definition is most commonly used for <a href="Data-rate_units" title="Data-rate units">data-rate units</a> in <a href="Computer_network" title="Computer network">computer networks</a>, internal bus, hard drive and flash media transfer speeds, and for the capacities of most <a href="Storage_media" class="mw-redirect" title="Storage media">storage media</a>, particularly <a href="Hard_drive" class="mw-redirect" title="Hard drive">hard drives</a>,<a href="#cite_note-36">[32]</a> <a href="Flash_memory" title="Flash memory">flash</a>-based storage,<a href="#cite_note-37">[33]</a> and <a href="DVD" title="DVD">DVDs</a>. <a href="Operating_system" title="Operating system">Operating systems</a> that use this definition include <a href="MacOS" title="MacOS">macOS</a>,<a href="#cite_note-apple-38">[34]</a> <a href="IOS" title="IOS">iOS</a>,<a href="#cite_note-apple-38">[34]</a> <a href="Ubuntu" title="Ubuntu">Ubuntu</a>,<a href="#cite_note-39">[35]</a> and <a href="Debian" title="Debian">Debian</a>.<a href="#cite_note-40">[36]</a> It is also consistent with the other uses of the <a href="SI_prefix" class="mw-redirect" title="SI prefix">SI prefixes</a> in computing, such as <a href="Hertz#Computers" title="Hertz">CPU clock speeds</a> or <a href="FLOPS" class="mw-redirect" title="FLOPS">measures of performance</a>.

The IBM System 360 and the related disk and tape systems set the byte at 8 bits and documented capacities in decimal units.<a href="#cite_note-41">[37]</a> The early 8-, 5.25- and 3.5-inch floppies gave capacities in multiples of 1024, using "KB" rather than the more accurate "KiB". The later, larger, 8-, 5.25- and 3.5-inch floppies gave capacities in a hybrid notation, i.e., multiples of 1024,000, using "KB" = 1024 B and "MB" = 1024,000 B.

Early 5.25-inch disks used decimal even though they used 128-byte and 256-byte sectors.<a href="#cite_note-42">[38]</a> Hard disks used mostly 256-byte and then 512-byte before 4096-byte blocks became standard.<a href="#cite_note-43">[39]</a> RAM was always sold in powers of 2.

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Units_based_on_powers_of_2">Units based on powers of 2</h3></div>

A system of units based on <a href="Powers_of_2" class="mw-redirect" title="Powers of 2">powers of 2</a> in which 1 kibibyte (KiB) is equal to 1,024 (i.e., 210) bytes is defined by international standard IEC 80000-13 and is supported by national and international standards bodies (<a href="BIPM" class="mw-redirect" title="BIPM">BIPM</a>, <a href="International_Electrotechnical_Commission" title="International Electrotechnical Commission">IEC</a>, <a href="NIST" class="mw-redirect" title="NIST">NIST</a>). The IEC standard defines eight such multiples, up to 1 yobibyte (YiB), equal to 10248 bytes. The natural binary counterparts to ronna- and quetta- were given in a consultation paper of the International Committee for Weights and Measures' Consultative Committee for Units (CCU) as robi- (Ri, 10249) and quebi- (Qi, 102410), but have not yet been adopted by the IEC or ISO.<a href="#cite_note-44">[40]</a>

An alternative system of nomenclature for the same units (referred to here as the customary convention), in which 1 kilobyte (KB) is equal to 1,024 bytes,<a href="#cite_note-45">[41]</a><a href="#cite_note-46">[42]</a><a href="#cite_note-47">[43]</a> 1 megabyte (MB) is equal to 10242 bytes and 1 gigabyte (GB) is equal to 10243 bytes is mentioned by a 1990s <a href="JEDEC" title="JEDEC">JEDEC</a> standard. Only the first three multiples (up to GB) are mentioned by the JEDEC standard, which makes no mention of TB and larger. While confusing and incorrect,<a href="#cite_note-48">[44]</a> the customary convention is used by the <a href="Microsoft_Windows" title="Microsoft Windows">Microsoft Windows</a> operating system<a href="#cite_note-auto-49">[45]</a> and <a href="Random-access_memory" title="Random-access memory">random-access memory</a> capacity, such as main memory and <a href="CPU_cache" title="CPU cache">CPU cache</a> size, and in marketing and billing by telecommunication companies, such as <a href="Vodafone" title="Vodafone">Vodafone</a>,<a href="#cite_note-50">[46]</a> <a href="AT%26T" title="AT&T">AT&T</a>,<a href="#cite_note-51">[47]</a> <a href="Orange_S.A." class="mw-redirect" title="Orange S.A.">Orange</a><a href="#cite_note-52">[48]</a> and <a href="Telstra" title="Telstra">Telstra</a>.<a href="#cite_note-53">[49]</a>

For <a href="Computer_data_storage" title="Computer data storage">storage</a> capacity, the customary convention was used by macOS and iOS through Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and iOS 10, after which they switched to units based on powers of 10.<a href="#cite_note-apple-38">[34]</a>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Parochial_units">Parochial units</h3></div>

Various computer vendors have coined terms for data of various sizes, sometimes with different sizes for the same term even within a single vendor. These terms include double word, half word, long word, quad word, slab, superword and syllable. There are also informal terms. e.g., half byte and nybble for 4 bits, octal K for 10008.

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="History_of_the_conflicting_definitions">History of the conflicting definitions</h3></div>

/* start https://en.wikipedia.org/ */

.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 32px}.mw-parser-output .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;margin-top:0}@media(min-width:500px){.mw-parser-output .templatequotecite{padding-left:1.6em}}

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</style><blockquote class="templatequote">When I see a disk advertised as having a capacity of one megabyte, what is this telling me? There are three plausible answers, and I wonder if anybody knows which one is correct ... Now this is not a really vital issue, as there is just under 5% difference between the smallest and largest alternatives. Nevertheless, it would [be] nice to know what the standard measure is, or if there is one.</blockquote><div class="templatequotecite">— Allan D. Pratt of Small Computers in Libraries, 1982<a href="#cite_note-pratt19820412-54">[50]</a></div>

Contemporary<a href="#cite_note-55">[e]</a> computer memory has a <a href="Binary_addressing" class="mw-redirect" title="Binary addressing">binary architecture</a> making a definition of memory units based on powers of 2 most practical. The use of the metric prefix kilo for binary multiples arose as a convenience, because 1024 is approximately 1000.<a href="#cite_note-IEC_Binary-31">[27]</a> This definition was popular in early decades of <a href="Personal_computing" class="mw-redirect" title="Personal computing">personal computing</a>, with products like the <a href="Tandon_Corporation" title="Tandon Corporation">Tandon</a> 5<style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r1154941027">

/* start https://en.wikipedia.org/ */

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</style>1⁄4-inch <a href="Double_density" class="mw-redirect" title="Double density">DD</a> floppy format (holding 368640 bytes) being advertised as "360 KB", following the 1024-byte convention. It was not universal, however. The <a href="Shugart_Associates" title="Shugart Associates">Shugart</a> SA-400 51⁄4-inch <a href="Floppy_disk" title="Floppy disk">floppy disk</a> held 109,375 bytes unformatted,<a href="#cite_note-56">[51]</a> and was advertised as "110 Kbyte", using the 1000 convention.<a href="#cite_note-57">[52]</a> Likewise, the 8-inch <a href="Digital_Equipment_Corporation" title="Digital Equipment Corporation">DEC</a> RX01 floppy (1975) held 256256 bytes formatted, and was advertised as "256k".<a href="#cite_note-58">[53]</a> Some devices were advertised using a mixture of the two definitions: most notably, floppy disks advertised as "1.44 MB" have an actual capacity of 1440 KiB, the equivalent of 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB.

In 1995, the <a href="International_Union_of_Pure_and_Applied_Chemistry" title="International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry">International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry</a>'s (IUPAC) Interdivisional Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols attempted to resolve this ambiguity by proposing a set of <a href="Binary_prefixes" class="mw-redirect" title="Binary prefixes">binary prefixes</a> for the powers of 1024, including kibi (kilobinary), mebi (megabinary), and gibi (gigabinary).<a href="#cite_note-59">[54]</a><a href="#cite_note-60">[55]</a>

In December 1998, the <a href="International_Electrotechnical_Commission" title="International Electrotechnical Commission">IEC</a> addressed such multiple usages and definitions by adopting the IUPAC's proposed prefixes (kibi, mebi, gibi, etc.) to unambiguously denote powers of 1024.<a href="#cite_note-61">[56]</a> Thus one kibibyte (1 KiB) is 10241 bytes = 1024 bytes, one mebibyte (1 MiB) is 10242 bytes = 1048576 bytes, and so on.

In 1999, <a href="Donald_Knuth" title="Donald Knuth">Donald Knuth</a> suggested calling the kibibyte a "large kilobyte" (KKB).<a href="#cite_note-kilobyte-62">[57]</a>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Modern_standard_definitions">Modern standard definitions</h3></div>

The IEC adopted the IUPAC proposal and published the standard in January 1999.<a href="#cite_note-63">[58]</a><a href="#cite_note-64">[59]</a> The IEC prefixes are part of the <a href="IEC_80000-13" class="mw-redirect" title="IEC 80000-13">International System of Quantities</a>. The IEC further specified that the kilobyte should only be used to refer to 1000 bytes.<a href="#cite_note-65">[60]</a>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Lawsuits_over_definition">Lawsuits over definition</h3></div>

Lawsuits arising from alleged consumer confusion over the binary and decimal definitions of multiples of the byte have generally ended in favor of the manufacturers, with courts holding that the legal definition of gigabyte or GB is 1 GB = 1000000000 (109) bytes (the decimal definition), rather than the binary definition (230, i.e., 1073741824). Specifically, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that "the U.S. Congress has deemed the decimal definition of gigabyte to be the 'preferred' one for the purposes of 'U.S. trade and commerce' [...] The California Legislature has likewise adopted the decimal system for all 'transactions in this state.'"<a href="#cite_note-Order_Granting_Motion_to_Dismiss-66">[61]</a>

Earlier lawsuits had ended in settlement with no court ruling on the question, such as a lawsuit against drive manufacturer <a href="Western_Digital" title="Western Digital">Western Digital</a>.<a href="#cite_note-WesternDigital-67">[62]</a><a href="#cite_note-Baskin-2006-02-01-68">[63]</a> Western Digital settled the challenge and added explicit disclaimers to products that the usable capacity may differ from the advertised capacity.<a href="#cite_note-WesternDigital-67">[62]</a> Seagate was sued on similar grounds and also settled.<a href="#cite_note-WesternDigital-67">[62]</a><a href="#cite_note-Seagate-69">[64]</a>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Practical_examples">Practical examples</h3></div>

<th width="55">Unit

</th>

<th width="450" class="unsortable">Approximate equivalent

</th></tr>

<tr>

<td rowspan="1">bit

</td>

<td>a <a href="Boolean_data_type" title="Boolean data type">Boolean</a> variable indicating true (1) or false (0)

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td rowspan="1">byte

</td>

<td>a <a href="Basic_Latin_(Unicode_block)" title="Basic Latin (Unicode block)">basic Latin</a> character.

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td rowspan="2">kilobyte

</td>

<td>text of "<a href="Jabberwocky" title="Jabberwocky">Jabberwocky</a>"

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>a typical <a href="Favicon" title="Favicon">favicon</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td rowspan="1">megabyte

</td>

<td>text of <a href="Harry_Potter_and_the_Goblet_of_Fire" title="Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire">Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire</a><a href="#cite_note-70">[65]</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td rowspan="2">gigabyte

</td>

<td>about half an hour of <a href="DVD-Video" title="DVD-Video">DVD</a> video<a href="#cite_note-71">[66]</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td><a href="CD" class="mw-redirect" title="CD">CD</a>-quality uncompressed audio of <a href="The_Lamb_Lies_Down_on_Broadway" title="The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway">The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td rowspan="2">terabyte

</td>

<td>the largest consumer hard drive in 2007<a href="#cite_note-Hitachi1st-72">[67]</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>75 hours of video, encoded at 30 Mbit/second

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>petabyte

</td>

<td>2000 years of <a href="MP3" title="MP3">MP3</a>-encoded music<a href="#cite_note-computerweekly.com-73">[68]</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td rowspan="1">exabyte

</td>

<td>global monthly <a href="Internet_traffic" title="Internet traffic">Internet traffic</a> in 2004<a href="#cite_note-74">[69]</a>

</td></tr>

<tr>

<td>zettabyte

</td>

<td>global yearly Internet traffic in 2016 (known as the <a href="Zettabyte_Era" title="Zettabyte Era">Zettabyte Era</a>)<a href="#cite_note-75">[70]</a>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Common_uses">Common uses</h2></div>

Many <a href="Programming_language" title="Programming language">programming languages</a> define the <a href="Data_type" title="Data type">data type</a> byte.

The <a href="C_(programming_language)" title="C (programming language)">C</a> and <a href="C%2B%2B" title="C++">C++</a> programming languages define byte as an "addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of the basic character set of the execution environment" (clause 3.6 of the C standard). The C standard requires that the integral data type <a href="Signedness" title="Signedness">unsigned</a> char must hold at least 256 different values, and is represented by at least eight bits (clause 5.2.4.2.1). Various implementations of C and C++ reserve 8, 9, 16, 32, or 36 bits for the storage of a byte.<a href="#cite_note-Cline_Bytes-76">[71]</a><a href="#cite_note-Klein_2008-77">[72]</a><a href="#cite_note-78">[f]</a> In addition, the C and C++ standards require that there be no gaps between two bytes. This means every bit in memory is part of a byte.<a href="#cite_note-Cline_FAQ-79">[73]</a>

<a href="Java_(programming_language)" title="Java (programming language)">Java's</a> primitive data type byte is defined as eight bits. It is a signed data type, holding values from −128 to 127.

<a href=".NET" title=".NET">.NET</a> programming languages, such as <a href="C_Sharp_(programming_language)" title="C Sharp (programming language)">C#</a>, define byte as an unsigned type, and the sbyte as a signed data type, holding values from 0 to 255, and <a href="Two's_complement" title="Two's complement">−128 to 127</a>, respectively.

In data transmission systems, the byte is used as a contiguous sequence of bits in a serial data stream, representing the smallest distinguished unit of data. For <a href="Asynchronous_communication" title="Asynchronous communication">asynchronous communication</a> a full transmission unit usually additionally includes a start bit, 1 or 2 stop bits, and possibly a <a href="Parity_bit" title="Parity bit">parity bit</a>, and thus its size may vary from seven to twelve bits for five to eight bits of actual data.<a href="#cite_note-NWU-80">[74]</a> For <a href="Synchronous_communication" class="mw-redirect" title="Synchronous communication">synchronous communication</a> the error checking usually uses bytes at the end of a <a href="Frame_(networking)" title="Frame (networking)">frame</a>.

<li><a href="Data_hierarchy" title="Data hierarchy">Data hierarchy</a></li>

<li><a href="Nibble" title="Nibble">Nibble</a></li>

<li><a href="Octet_(computing)" title="Octet (computing)">Octet (computing)</a></li>

<li><a href="Primitive_data_type" title="Primitive data type">Primitive data type</a></li>

<li><a href="Tryte" class="mw-redirect" title="Tryte">Tryte</a></li>

<li><a href="Word_(computer_architecture)" title="Word (computer architecture)">Word (computer architecture)</a></li></ul>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Notes">Notes</h2></div>

<li id="cite_note-8"><a href="#cite_ref-8">^</a> The term syllable was used for bytes containing instructions or constituents of instructions, not for data bytes.

</li>

<li id="cite_note-16"><a href="#cite_ref-16">^</a> Many sources erroneously indicate a birthday of the term byte in July 1956, but <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Werner Buchholz</a> claimed that the term would have been coined in <a href="#Buchholz-1977">June 1956</a>. In fact, the <a href="#Buchholz-1956-1">earliest document</a> supporting this dates from 1956-06-11. Buchholz stated that the transition to 8-bit bytes was conceived in <a href="#Buchholz-1977">August 1956</a>, but the earliest document found using this notion dates from <a href="#Buchholz-1956-3">September 1956</a>.

</li>

<li id="cite_note-22"><a href="#cite_ref-22">^</a> Some later machines, e.g., <a href="Burroughs_B1700" title="Burroughs B1700">Burroughs B1700</a>, <a href="CDC_3600" class="mw-redirect" title="CDC 3600">CDC 3600</a>, DEC PDP-6, <a href="DEC_PDP-10" class="mw-redirect" title="DEC PDP-10">DEC PDP-10</a> had the ability to operate on arbitrary bytes no larger than the word size.

</li>

<li id="cite_note-26"><a href="#cite_ref-26">^</a> There was more than one BCD code page.

</li>

<li id="cite_note-55"><a href="#cite_ref-55">^</a> Through the 1970s there were machines with <a href="Decimal_computer" title="Decimal computer">decimal</a> architectures.

</li>

<li id="cite_note-78"><a href="#cite_ref-78">^</a> The actual number of bits in a particular implementation is documented as <code>CHAR_BIT</code> as implemented in the file <a href="Limits.h" class="mw-redirect" title="Limits.h">limits.h</a>.

</li>

</ol>

</div>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>

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<cite id="CITEREFBlaauwBrooks,_Jr.Buchholz1962" class="citation cs2"><a href="Gerrit_Anne_Blaauw" class="mw-redirect" title="Gerrit Anne Blaauw">Blaauw, Gerrit Anne</a>; <a href="Frederick_Phillips_Brooks%2C_Jr." class="mw-redirect" title="Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr.">Brooks, Jr., Frederick Phillips</a>; <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Buchholz, Werner</a> (1962), <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170403014651/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/pdfs/Buchholz_102636426.pdf">"Chapter 4: Natural Data Units"</a> (PDF), in <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Buchholz, Werner</a> (ed.), Planning a Computer System - Project Stretch, <a href="McGraw-Hill_Book_Company%2C_Inc." class="mw-redirect" title="McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.">McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.</a> / The Maple Press Company, York, PA., pp. 39–40, <a href="LCCN_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="LCCN (identifier)">LCCN</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://lccn.loc.gov/61-10466">61-10466</a>, archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/pdfs/Buchholz_102636426.pdf">the original</a> (PDF) on 2017-04-03, retrieved 2017-04-03</cite>

Terms used here to describe the structure imposed by the machine design, in addition to <a href="Bit" title="Bit">bit</a>, are listed below.

Byte denotes a group of bits used to encode a character, or the number of bits transmitted in parallel to and from input-output units. A term other than <a href="Character_(computing)" title="Character (computing)">character</a> is used here because a given character may be represented in different applications by more than one code, and different codes may use different numbers of bits (i.e., different byte sizes). In input-output transmission the grouping of bits may be completely arbitrary and have no relation to actual characters. (The term is coined from <a href="Bite" class="mw-redirect" title="Bite">bite</a>, but respelled to avoid accidental mutation to bit.)

A <a href="Word_(unit)" class="mw-redirect" title="Word (unit)">word</a> consists of the number of data bits transmitted in parallel from or to memory in one memory cycle. <a href="Word_size" class="mw-redirect" title="Word size">Word size</a> is thus defined as a structural property of the memory. (The term <a href="Catena_(unit)" class="mw-redirect" title="Catena (unit)">catena</a> was coined for this purpose by the designers of the <a href="Groupe_Bull" title="Groupe Bull">Bull</a> <a href="Bull_Gamma_60" title="Bull Gamma 60">GAMMA 60</a> computer.)

<a href="Block_(data_storage)" title="Block (data storage)">Block</a> refers to the number of words transmitted to or from an input-output unit in response to a single input-output instruction. Block size is a structural property of an input-output unit; it may have been fixed by the design or left to be varied by the program.

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<cite id="CITEREFBemer1959" class="citation cs2"><a href="Robert_William_Bemer" class="mw-redirect" title="Robert William Bemer">Bemer, Robert William</a> (1959), "A proposal for a generalized card code of 256 characters", <a href="Communications_of_the_ACM" title="Communications of the ACM">Communications of the ACM</a>, 2 (9): 19–23, <a href="Doi_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="Doi (identifier)">doi</a>:<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F368424.368435">10.1145/368424.368435</a>, <a href="S2CID_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="S2CID (identifier)">S2CID</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:36115735">36115735</a></cite>

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<cite id="CITEREFPostel1981" class="citation cs1">Postel, J. (September 1981). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc791#page-43">Internet Protocol DARPA INTERNET PROGRAM PROTOCOL SPECIFICATION</a>. p. 43. <a href="Doi_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="Doi (identifier)">doi</a>:<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://doi.org/10.17487%2FRFC0791">10.17487/RFC0791</a>. <a href="Request_for_Comments" title="Request for Comments">RFC</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc791">791</a>. Retrieved 28 August 2020. <q>octet An eight bit byte.</q></cite>

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<cite id="CITEREFBuchholz1956" class="citation book cs1"><a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Buchholz, Werner</a> (1956-06-11). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170404152534/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/pdfs/06-07/102632284.pdf">"7. The Shift Matrix"</a> (PDF). The Link System. <a href="IBM" title="IBM">IBM</a>. pp. 5–6. <a href="IBM_Stretch" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM Stretch">Stretch</a> Memo No. 39G. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/pdfs/06-07/102632284.pdf">the original</a> (PDF) on 2017-04-04. Retrieved 2016-04-04.</cite>

[...] Most important, from the point of view of editing, will be the ability to handle any characters or digits, from 1 to 6 bits long.

Figure 2 shows the Shift Matrix to be used to convert a 60-bit <a href="Word_(computer_architecture)" title="Word (computer architecture)">word</a>, coming from Memory in parallel, into <a href="Character_(computing)" title="Character (computing)">characters</a>, or 'bytes' as we have called them, to be sent to the <a href="Serial_adder" class="mw-redirect" title="Serial adder">Adder</a> serially. The 60 bits are dumped into <a href="Magnetic_core" title="Magnetic core">magnetic cores</a> on six different levels. Thus, if a 1 comes out of position 9, it appears in all six cores underneath. Pulsing any diagonal line will send the six bits stored along that line to the Adder. The Adder may accept all or only some of the bits.

Assume that it is desired to operate on 4 bit <a href="Decimal_digit" class="mw-redirect" title="Decimal digit">decimal digits</a>, starting at the right. The 0-diagonal is pulsed first, sending out the six bits 0 to 5, of which the Adder accepts only the first four (0-3). Bits 4 and 5 are ignored. Next, the 4 diagonal is pulsed. This sends out bits 4 to 9, of which the last two are again ignored, and so on.

It is just as easy to use all six bits in <a href="Alphanumeric" class="mw-redirect" title="Alphanumeric">alphanumeric</a> work, or to handle bytes of only one bit for logical analysis, or to offset the bytes by any number of bits. All this can be done by pulling the appropriate shift diagonals. An analogous matrix arrangement is used to change from serial to parallel operation at the output of the adder. [...]

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<cite class="citation book cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170405154001/http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/cdc/3x00/48bit/60021300K_3600_SysRef_Oct66.pdf">3600 Computer System - Reference Manual</a> (PDF). K. St. Paul, Minnesota, US: <a href="Control_Data_Corporation" title="Control Data Corporation">Control Data Corporation</a> (CDC). 1966-10-11 [1965]. 60021300. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://bitsavers.org/pdf/cdc/3x00/48bit/60021300K_3600_SysRef_Oct66.pdf">the original</a> (PDF) on 2017-04-05. Retrieved 2017-04-05. <q>Byte - A partition of a computer word.</q></cite>

    NB. Discusses 12-bit, 24-bit and 48-bit bytes.

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<cite id="CITEREFRaoFujiwara1989" class="citation book cs1">Rao, Thammavaram R. N.; Fujiwara, Eiji (1989). McCluskey, Edward J. (ed.). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://archive.org/details/errorcontrolcodi00unse">Error-Control Coding for Computer Systems</a>. Prentice Hall Series in Computer Engineering (1 ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US: <a href="Prentice_Hall" title="Prentice Hall">Prentice Hall</a>. <a href="ISBN_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="ISBN (identifier)">ISBN</a> <bdi>0-13-283953-9</bdi>. <a href="LCCN_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="LCCN (identifier)">LCCN</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://lccn.loc.gov/88-17892">88-17892</a>.</cite>

    NB. Example of the usage of a code for "4-bit bytes".

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<cite id="CITEREFTafel1971" class="citation book cs1 cs1-prop-foreign-lang-source">Tafel, Hans Jörg (1971). Einführung in die digitale Datenverarbeitung [Introduction to digital information processing] (in German). Munich: <a href="Carl_Hanser_Verlag" title="Carl Hanser Verlag">Carl Hanser Verlag</a>. p. 300. <a href="ISBN_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="ISBN (identifier)">ISBN</a> <bdi>3-446-10569-7</bdi>. <q>Byte = zusammengehörige Folge von i.a. neun Bits; davon sind acht Datenbits, das neunte ein Prüfbit</q></cite>

    NB. Defines a byte as a group of typically 9 bits; 8 data bits plus 1 parity bit.

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<cite class="citation book cs1">ISO/IEC 2382-1: 1993, Information technology - Vocabulary - Part 1: Fundamental terms. 1993.</cite>

byte:

A string that consists of a number of bits, treated as a unit, and usually representing a character or a part of a character.

NOTES:

1 The number of bits in a byte is fixed for a given data processing system.

    2 The number of bits in a byte is usually 8.

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<cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.computerhistory.org/internethistory/1960s/#1964">"Internet History of 1960s # 1964"</a>. <a href="Computer_History_Museum" title="Computer History Museum">Computer History Museum</a>. 2017 [2015]. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220624184757/https://www.computerhistory.org/internethistory/1960s/#1964">Archived</a> from the original on 2022-06-24. Retrieved 2022-08-17.</cite>

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<cite id="CITEREFJaffer2011" class="citation web cs1">Jaffer, Aubrey (2011) [2008]. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/MIXF/">"Metric-Interchange-Format"</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170403121705/https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/MIXF/">Archived</a> from the original on 2017-04-03. Retrieved 2017-04-03.</cite>

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<cite id="CITEREFKozierok2005" class="citation web cs1">Kozierok, Charles M. (2005-09-20) [2001]. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_BinaryInformationandRepresentationBitsBytesNibbles-3.htm">"The TCP/IP Guide - Binary Information and Representation: Bits, Bytes, Nibbles, Octets and Characters - Byte versus Octet"</a>. 3.0. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170403122042/http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_BinaryInformationandRepresentationBitsBytesNibbles-3.htm">Archived</a> from the original on 2017-04-03. Retrieved 2017-04-03.</cite>

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<cite class="citation book cs1">ISO 2382-4, Organization of data (2 ed.). <q>byte, octet, 8-bit byte: A string that consists of eight bits.</q></cite>

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<cite id="CITEREFBuchholz1977" class="citation journal cs1"><a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Buchholz, Werner</a> (February 1977). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-02/page/n145/mode/1up">"The Word "Byte" Comes of Age..."</a> <a href="Byte_Magazine" class="mw-redirect" title="Byte Magazine">Byte Magazine</a>. 2 (2): 144.</cite>

We received the following from W Buchholz, one of the individuals who was working on IBM's Project Stretch in the mid 1950s. His letter tells the story.

Not being a regular reader of your magazine, I heard about the question in the November 1976 issue regarding the origin of the term "byte" from a colleague who knew that I had perpetrated this piece of jargon [see page 77 of November 1976 BYTE, "Olde Englishe"]. I searched my files and could not locate a birth certificate. But I am sure that "byte" is coming of age in 1977 with its 21st birthday.

Many have assumed that byte, meaning 8 bits, originated with the IBM System/360, which spread such bytes far and wide in the mid-1960s. The editor is correct in pointing out that the term goes back to the earlier Stretch computer (but incorrect in that Stretch was the first, not the last, of IBM's second-generation transistorized computers to be developed).

The first reference found in the files was contained in an internal memo written in June 1956 during the early days of developing <a href="IBM_Stretch" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM Stretch">Stretch</a>. A byte was described as consisting of any number of parallel bits from one to six. Thus a byte was assumed to have a length appropriate for the occasion. Its first use was in the context of the input-output equipment of the 1950s, which handled six bits at a time. The possibility of going to 8-bit bytes was considered in <a href="#Note-Dates">August 1956</a> and incorporated in the design of Stretch <a href="#Buchholz-1956-3">shortly thereafter</a>.

The first published reference to the term occurred in 1959 in a paper '<a href="#Blaauw-1959">Processing Data in Bits and Pieces</a>' by <a href="Gerrit_Anne_Blaauw" class="mw-redirect" title="Gerrit Anne Blaauw">G A Blaauw</a>, <a href="Frederick_Phillips_Brooks%2C_Jr." class="mw-redirect" title="Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr.">F P Brooks Jr</a> and <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">W Buchholz</a> in the <a href="IRE_Transactions_on_Electronic_Computers" class="mw-redirect" title="IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers">IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers</a>, June 1959, page 121. The notions of that paper were elaborated in <a href="#Buchholz-1962">Chapter 4 of Planning a Computer System (Project Stretch)</a>, edited by W Buchholz, McGraw-Hill Book Company (1962). The rationale for coining the term was explained there on page 40 as follows:

Byte denotes a group of bits used to encode a character, or the number of bits transmitted in parallel to and from input-output units. A term other than character is used here because a given character may be represented in different applications by more than one code, and different codes may use different numbers of bits (ie, different byte sizes). In input-output transmission the grouping of bits may be completely arbitrary and have no relation to actual characters. (The term is coined from <a href="Bite" class="mw-redirect" title="Bite">bite</a>, but respelled to avoid accidental mutation to bit.)

<a href="System/360" class="mw-redirect" title="System/360">System/360</a> took over many of the Stretch concepts, including the basic byte and word sizes, which are powers of 2. For economy, however, the byte size was fixed at the 8 bit maximum, and addressing at the bit level was replaced by byte addressing.

Since then the term byte has generally meant 8 bits, and it has thus passed into the general vocabulary.

    Are there any other terms coined especially for the computer field which have found their way into general dictionaries of English language?

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<cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160429212717/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/102636400.txt">"Timeline of the IBM Stretch/Harvest era (1956-1961)"</a>. <a href="Computer_History_Museum" title="Computer History Museum">Computer History Museum</a>. June 1956. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/102636400.txt">the original</a> on 2016-04-29. Retrieved 2017-04-03.</cite>

1956 Summer: <a href="Gerrit_Blaauw" title="Gerrit Blaauw">Gerrit Blaauw</a>, <a href="Fred_Brooks" title="Fred Brooks">Fred Brooks</a>, <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Werner Buchholz</a>, <a href="John_Cocke_(computer_scientist)" title="John Cocke (computer scientist)">John Cocke</a> and Jim Pomerene join the <a href="IBM_Stretch" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM Stretch">Stretch</a> team. Lloyd Hunter provides <a href="Transistor" title="Transistor">transistor</a> leadership.

1956 July [<a href="Sic" title="Sic">sic</a>]: In a report Werner Buchholz lists the advantages of a 64-bit word length for Stretch. It also supports <a href="NSA" class="mw-redirect" title="NSA">NSA</a>'s requirement for 8-bit bytes. Werner's term "Byte" first popularized in this memo.

</div></blockquote>

NB. This timeline erroneously specifies the birth date of the term "byte" as <a href="#Note-Dates">July 1956</a>, while Buchholz actually used the term as early as <a href="#Buchholz-1956-1">June 1956</a>.

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<cite id="CITEREFBuchholz1956" class="citation book cs1"><a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Buchholz, Werner</a> (1956-07-31). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170404160423/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/pdfs/06-08/102632289.pdf">"5. Input-Output"</a> (PDF). Memory Word Length. <a href="IBM" title="IBM">IBM</a>. p. 2. <a href="IBM_Stretch" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM Stretch">Stretch</a> Memo No. 40. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/pdfs/06-08/102632289.pdf">the original</a> (PDF) on 2017-04-04. Retrieved 2016-04-04.</cite>

[...] 60 is a multiple of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Hence bytes of length from 1 to 6 bits can be packed efficiently into a 60-bit <a href="Word_(computer_architecture)" title="Word (computer architecture)">word</a> without having to split a byte between one word and the next. If longer bytes were needed, 60 bits would, of course, no longer be ideal. With present applications, 1, 4, and 6 bits are the really important cases.

    With 64-bit words, it would often be necessary to make some compromises, such as leaving 4 bits unused in a word when dealing with 6-bit bytes at the input and output. However, the LINK Computer can be equipped to edit out these gaps and to permit handling of bytes which are split between words. [...]

</div></blockquote>

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<cite id="CITEREFBuchholz1956" class="citation book cs1"><a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Buchholz, Werner</a> (1956-09-19). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170404161611/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/pdfs/06-08/102632292.pdf">"2. Input-Output Byte Size"</a> (PDF). Memory Word Length and Indexing. <a href="IBM" title="IBM">IBM</a>. p. 1. <a href="IBM_Stretch" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM Stretch">Stretch</a> Memo No. 45. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/pdfs/06-08/102632292.pdf">the original</a> (PDF) on 2017-04-04. Retrieved 2016-04-04.</cite>

[...] The maximum input-output byte size for serial operation will now be 8 bits, not counting any error detection and correction bits. Thus, the Exchange will operate on an 8-bit byte basis, and any input-output units with less than 8 bits per byte will leave the remaining bits blank. The resultant gaps can be edited out later by programming [...]

</div></blockquote>

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<cite id="CITEREFRaymond2017" class="citation web cs1"><a href="Eric_Steven_Raymond" class="mw-redirect" title="Eric Steven Raymond">Raymond, Eric Steven</a> (2017) [2003]. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/byte.html">"byte definition"</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170403120304/http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/byte.html">Archived</a> from the original on 2017-04-03. Retrieved 2017-04-03.</cite>

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<cite id="CITEREFBemer2000" class="citation web cs1"><a href="Robert_William_Bemer" class="mw-redirect" title="Robert William Bemer">Bemer, Robert William</a> (2000-08-08). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170403130829/http://www.bobbemer.com/BYTE.HTM">"Why is a byte 8 bits? Or is it?"</a>. Computer History Vignettes. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.bobbemer.com/BYTE.HTM">the original</a> on 2017-04-03. Retrieved 2017-04-03.</cite>

I came to work for <a href="IBM" title="IBM">IBM</a>, and saw all the confusion caused by the 64-character limitation. Especially when we started to think about word processing, which would require both upper and lower case.

Add 26 lower case letters to 47 existing, and one got 73 -- 9 more than 6 bits could represent.

I even made a proposal (in view of <a href="IBM_Stretch" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM Stretch">STRETCH</a>, the very first computer I know of with an 8-bit byte) that would extend the number of <a href="Punch_card" class="mw-redirect" title="Punch card">punch card</a> character codes to 256 <a href="#Bemer_1959">[1]</a>.

Some folks took it seriously. I thought of it as a spoof.

So some folks started thinking about 7-bit characters, but this was ridiculous. With IBM's STRETCH computer as background, handling 64-character words divisible into groups of 8 (I designed the character set for it, under the guidance of Dr. <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Werner Buchholz</a>, the man who DID coin the term "byte" for an 8-bit grouping). [2] It seemed reasonable to make a universal 8-bit character set, handling up to 256. In those days my mantra was "powers of 2 are magic". And so the group I headed developed and justified such a proposal [3].

That was a little too much progress when presented to the standards group that was to formalize ASCII, so they stopped short for the moment with a 7-bit set, or else an 8-bit set with the upper half left for future work.

The <a href="IBM_System_360" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM System 360">IBM 360</a> used 8-bit characters, although not ASCII directly. Thus Buchholz's "byte" caught on everywhere. I myself did not like the name for many reasons. The design had 8 bits moving around in parallel. But then came a new IBM part, with 9 bits for self-checking, both inside the CPU and in the <a href="Tape_drive" title="Tape drive">tape drives</a>. I exposed this 9-bit byte to the press in 1973. But long before that, when I headed software operations for <a href="Cie._Bull" class="mw-redirect" title="Cie. Bull">Cie. Bull</a> in France in 1965-66, I insisted that 'byte' be deprecated in favor of "<a href="Octet_(computing)" title="Octet (computing)">octet</a>".

You can notice that my preference then is now the preferred term.

It is justified by new communications methods that can carry 16, 32, 64, and even 128 bits in parallel. But some foolish people now refer to a "16-bit byte" because of this parallel transfer, which is visible in the <a href="UNICODE" class="mw-redirect" title="UNICODE">UNICODE</a> set. I'm not sure, but maybe this should be called a "<a href="Hextet" title="Hextet">hextet</a>".

But you will notice that I am still correct. Powers of 2 are still magic!

</div></blockquote>

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<cite id="CITEREFBlaauwBrooks,_Jr.Buchholz1959" class="citation journal cs1"><a href="Gerrit_Anne_Blaauw" class="mw-redirect" title="Gerrit Anne Blaauw">Blaauw, Gerrit Anne</a>; <a href="Frederick_Phillips_Brooks%2C_Jr." class="mw-redirect" title="Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr.">Brooks, Jr., Frederick Phillips</a>; <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Buchholz, Werner</a> (June 1959). "Processing Data in Bits and Pieces". <a href="IRE_Transactions_on_Electronic_Computers" class="mw-redirect" title="IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers">IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers</a>: 121.</cite>

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<cite id="CITEREFDooley1995" class="citation journal cs1">Dooley, Louis G. (February 1995). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/19961220122258/http://www.byte.com/art/9502/sec2/art12.htm">"Byte: The Word"</a>. <a href="BYTE" class="mw-redirect" title="BYTE">BYTE</a>. Ocala, FL, US. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.byte.com/art/9502/sec2/art12.htm">the original</a> on 1996-12-20.</cite>

The word byte was coined around 1956 to 1957 at <a href="MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory" title="MIT Lincoln Laboratory">MIT Lincoln Laboratories</a> within a project called <a href="Experimental_SAGE_Subsector" title="Experimental SAGE Subsector">SAGE</a> (the North American Air Defense System), which was jointly developed by <a href="Rand_Corporation" class="mw-redirect" title="Rand Corporation">Rand</a>, Lincoln Labs, and <a href="IBM" title="IBM">IBM</a>. In that era, computer memory structure was already defined in terms of <a href="Word_size_(computing)" class="mw-redirect" title="Word size (computing)">word size</a>. A word consisted of x number of <a href="Bit" title="Bit">bits</a>; a bit represented a binary notational position in a word. Operations typically operated on all the bits in the full word.

We coined the word byte to refer to a logical set of bits less than a full word size. At that time, it was not defined specifically as x bits but typically referred to as a set of <a href="Nibble_(computing)" class="mw-redirect" title="Nibble (computing)">4 bits</a>, as that was the size of most of our coded data items. Shortly afterward, I went on to other responsibilities that removed me from SAGE. After having spent many years in Asia, I returned to the U.S. and was bemused to find out that the word byte was being used in the new microcomputer technology to refer to the basic addressable memory unit.

</div></blockquote>

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<cite id="CITEREFRam2003" class="citation web cs1 cs1-prop-foreign-lang-source">Ram, Stefan (17 January 2003). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/code_byte_de">"Erklärung des Wortes "Byte" im Rahmen der Lehre binärer Codes"</a> (in German). Berlin, Germany: <a href="Freie_Universit%C3%A4t_Berlin" class="mw-redirect" title="Freie Universität Berlin">Freie Universität Berlin</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210610055304/http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/code_byte_de">Archived</a> from the original on 2021-06-10. Retrieved 2017-04-10.</cite>

</li>

<cite class="citation cs2"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/july99/0646.html">Origin of the term "byte", 1956</a>, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170410125522/http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/july99/0646.html">archived</a> from the original on 2017-04-10, retrieved 2022-08-17</cite>

A question-and-answer session at an <a href="ACM_conference" class="mw-redirect" title="ACM conference">ACM conference</a> on the history of programming languages included this exchange:

[ <a href="John_Goodenough" class="mw-redirect" title="John Goodenough">John Goodenough</a>:

You mentioned that the term "byte" is used in <a href="JOVIAL" title="JOVIAL">JOVIAL</a>. Where did the term come from? ]

[ <a href="Jules_Schwartz" title="Jules Schwartz">Jules Schwartz</a> (inventor of JOVIAL):

As I recall, the <a href="AN/FSQ-31" class="mw-redirect" title="AN/FSQ-31">AN/FSQ-31</a>, a totally different computer than the <a href="IBM_709" title="IBM 709">709</a>, was byte oriented. I don't recall for sure, but I'm reasonably certain the description of that computer included the word "byte," and we used it. ]

[ <a href="Fred_Brooks" title="Fred Brooks">Fred Brooks</a>:

May I speak to that? <a href="Werner_Buchholz" title="Werner Buchholz">Werner Buchholz</a> coined the word as part of the definition of <a href="IBM_STRETCH" class="mw-redirect" title="IBM STRETCH">STRETCH</a>, and the AN/FSQ-31 picked it up from STRETCH, but Werner is very definitely the author of that word. ]

[ Schwartz:

    That's right. Thank you. ]

</div></blockquote>

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[

|*| About bits and bytes: prefixes for binary multiples - IEC

|*| v0: <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090818042050/http://www.iec.ch/online_news/etech/arch_2003/etech_0503/focus.htm">https://web.archive.org/web/20090818042050/http://www.iec.ch/online_news/etech/arch_2003/etech_0503/focus.htm</a>

|*| v1: <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://www.iec.ch/prefixes-binary-multiples">https://www.iec.ch/prefixes-binary-multiples</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210816011633/https://www.iec.ch/prefixes-binary-multiples">Archived</a> 2021-08-16 at the <a href="Wayback_Machine" title="Wayback Machine">Wayback Machine</a> ]

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<li id="cite_note-Order_Granting_Motion_to_Dismiss-66"><a href="#cite_ref-Order_Granting_Motion_to_Dismiss_66-0">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/flashdrives.pdf">"Order Granting Motion to Dismiss"</a> (PDF). <a href="United_States_District_Court_for_the_Northern_District_of_California" title="United States District Court for the Northern District of California">United States District Court for the Northern District of California</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211007112246/https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/flashdrives.pdf">Archived</a> (PDF) from the original on 2021-10-07. Retrieved 2020-01-24.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-WesternDigital-67">^ <a href="#cite_ref-WesternDigital_67-0">a</a> <a href="#cite_ref-WesternDigital_67-1">b</a> <a href="#cite_ref-WesternDigital_67-2">c</a> <cite id="CITEREFMook2006" class="citation web cs1">Mook, Nate (2006-06-28). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.betanews.com/article/Western-Digital-Settles-Capacity-Suit/1151510648">"Western Digital Settles Capacity Suit"</a>. betanews. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090907183334/http://www.betanews.com/article/Western-Digital-Settles-Capacity-Suit/1151510648">Archived</a> from the original on 2009-09-07. Retrieved 2009-03-30.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-Baskin-2006-02-01-68"><a href="#cite_ref-Baskin-2006-02-01_68-0">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFBaskin2006" class="citation web cs1">Baskin, Scott D. (2006-02-01). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090102041947/http://www.wdc.com/settlement/docs/document20.htm">"Defendant Western Digital Corporation's Brief in Support of Plaintiff's Motion for Preliminary Approval"</a>. Orin Safier v. Western Digital Corporation. <a href="Western_Digital_Corporation" class="mw-redirect" title="Western Digital Corporation">Western Digital Corporation</a>. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.wdc.com/settlement/docs/document20.htm">the original</a> on 2009-01-02. Retrieved 2009-03-30.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-Seagate-69"><a href="#cite_ref-Seagate_69-0">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFJudge2007" class="citation news cs1">Judge, Peter (2007-10-26). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/seagate-pays-out-over-gigabyte-definition/">"Seagate pays out over gigabyte definition"</a>. ZDNet. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140903033455/http://www.zdnet.com/seagate-pays-out-over-gigabyte-definition-3039290393/">Archived</a> from the original on 2014-09-03. Retrieved 2014-09-16.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-70"><a href="#cite_ref-70">^</a> Allison Dexter, "How Many Words are in Harry Potter?", <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-are-in-harry-potter/">[1]</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210125205432/https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-are-in-harry-potter/">Archived</a> 2021-01-25 at the <a href="Wayback_Machine" title="Wayback Machine">Wayback Machine</a>; shows 190637 words

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<li id="cite_note-71"><a href="#cite_ref-71">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/bits-gigabytes.html">"Kilobytes Megabytes Gigabytes Terabytes (Stanford University)"</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201108095242/https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/bits-gigabytes.html">Archived</a> from the original on 2020-11-08. Retrieved 2020-12-12.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-Hitachi1st-72"><a href="#cite_ref-Hitachi1st_72-0">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFPerenson2007" class="citation news cs1">Perenson, Melissa J. (4 January 2007). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20121024011417/http://www.pcworld.com/article/128400/article.html">"Hitachi Introduces 1-Terabyte Hard Drive"</a>. <a href="PC_World" title="PC World">www.pcworld.com</a>. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/128400/article.html">the original</a> on 24 October 2012. Retrieved 5 December 2020.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-computerweekly.com-73"><a href="#cite_ref-computerweekly.com_73-0">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180128072952/http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/What-does-a-petabyte-look-like">"What does a petabyte look like?"</a>. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/What-does-a-petabyte-look-like">the original</a> on 28 January 2018. Retrieved 19 February 2018.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-74"><a href="#cite_ref-74">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFGross2007" class="citation web cs1">Gross, Grant (24 November 2007). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.pcworld.com/article/139885/article.html">"Internet Could Max Out in 2 Years, Study Says"</a>. <a href="PC_World" title="PC World">PC World</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20071126041511/http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139885-pg,1/article.html">Archived</a> from the original on 26 November 2007. Retrieved 28 November 2007.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-75"><a href="#cite_ref-75">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/the-zettabyte-era-officially-begins-how-much-is-that">"The Zettabyte Era Officially Begins (How Much is That?)"</a>. Cisco Blogs. 2016-09-09. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210802021532/https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/the-zettabyte-era-officially-begins-how-much-is-that">Archived</a> from the original on 2021-08-02. Retrieved 2021-08-04.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-Cline_Bytes-76"><a href="#cite_ref-Cline_Bytes_76-0">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFCline" class="citation web cs1">Cline, Marshall. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/intrinsic-types#very-large-bytes">"I could imagine a machine with 9-bit bytes. But surely not 16-bit bytes or 32-bit bytes, right?"</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190321232538/https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/intrinsic-types#very-large-bytes">Archived</a> from the original on 2019-03-21. Retrieved 2015-06-18.</cite>

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<cite id="CITEREFKlein2008" class="citation cs2">Klein, Jack (2008), <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100327225121/http://home.att.net/~jackklein/c/inttypes.html#char">Integer Types in C and C++</a>, archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://home.att.net/~jackklein/c/inttypes.html#char">the original</a> on 2010-03-27, retrieved 2015-06-18</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-Cline_FAQ-79"><a href="#cite_ref-Cline_FAQ_79-0">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFCline" class="citation web cs1">Cline, Marshall. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/intrinsic-types#bytes-review">"C++ FAQ: the rules about bytes, chars, and characters"</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190321232538/https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/intrinsic-types#bytes-review">Archived</a> from the original on 2019-03-21. Retrieved 2015-06-18.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-NWU-80"><a href="#cite_ref-NWU_80-0">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/local-apps/matlabhelp/techdoc/matlab_external/ch_seri8.html">"External Interfaces/API"</a>. Northwestern University. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180809063331/http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/local-apps/matlabhelp/techdoc/matlab_external/ch_seri8.html">Archived</a> from the original on 2018-08-09. Retrieved 2016-09-02.</cite>

</li>

</ol></div></div>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Further_reading">Further reading</h2></div>

<ul><li><cite class="citation book cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/1970_PDP-10_Ref/1970PDP10Ref_Part1.pdf#page=33">"2.5 Byte manipulation"</a> (PDF). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/1970_PDP-10_Ref/1970PDP10Ref_Part1.pdf">Programming with the PDP-10 Instruction Set</a> (PDF). PDP-10 System Reference Manual. Vol. 1. <a href="Digital_Equipment_Corporation" title="Digital Equipment Corporation">Digital Equipment Corporation</a> (DEC). August 1969. pp. 2-15 – 2-17. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170405154620/http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/pdp10/1970_PDP-10_Ref/1970PDP10Ref_Part1.pdf">Archived</a> (PDF) from the original on 2017-04-05. Retrieved 2017-04-05.</cite></li>

<li>Ashley Taylor. "Bits and Bytes". Stanford. <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/bits-bytes.html">https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/bits-bytes.html</a></li></ul>

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</style></div><div role="navigation" class="navbox" aria-labelledby="Units_of_information107" style="padding:3px"><table class="nowraplinks mw-collapsible autocollapse navbox-inner" style="border-spacing:0;background:transparent;color:inherit"><tbody><tr><th scope="col" class="navbox-title" colspan="2"><div id="Units_of_information107" style="font-size:114%;margin:0 4em"><a href="Units_of_information" title="Units of information">Units of information</a></div></th></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%">Platform-independent units</th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-odd hlist" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<li><a href="Hextet" title="Hextet">hextet</a></li>

<li><a href="Octet_(computing)" title="Octet (computing)">octet</a></li></ul>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%">Platform-dependent units</th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-even hlist" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Nibble" title="Nibble">nibble</a></li>

<li><a href="Syllable_(computing)" title="Syllable (computing)">syllable</a></li>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%">Metric bit units</th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-odd hlist" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Kilobit" class="mw-redirect" title="Kilobit">kilobit</a></li>

<li><a href="Megabit" class="mw-redirect" title="Megabit">megabit</a></li></ul>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%">Metric byte units</th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-even hlist" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Kilobyte" title="Kilobyte">kilobyte</a></li>

<li><a href="Megabyte" title="Megabyte">megabyte</a></li>

<li><a href="Gigabyte" title="Gigabyte">gigabyte</a></li></ul>

</div></td></tr></tbody></table></div>

<div class="navbox-styles"></div><div role="navigation" class="navbox" aria-labelledby="Data_types177" style="padding:3px"><table class="nowraplinks hlist mw-collapsible autocollapse navbox-inner" style="border-spacing:0;background:transparent;color:inherit"><tbody><tr><th scope="col" class="navbox-title" colspan="2"><div id="Data_types177" style="font-size:114%;margin:0 4em"><a href="Data_type" title="Data type">Data types</a></div></th></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%"><a href="Units_of_information" title="Units of information">Uninterpreted</a></th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-odd" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<li><a href="Ternary_numeral_system#Tryte" title="Ternary numeral system">Tryte</a></li>

<li><a href="Bit_array" title="Bit array">Bit array</a></li></ul>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%">Numeric</th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-even" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Arbitrary-precision_arithmetic" title="Arbitrary-precision arithmetic">Arbitrary-precision or bignum</a></li>

<li><a href="Complex_data_type" title="Complex data type">Complex</a></li>

<li><a href="Decimal_data_type" title="Decimal data type">Decimal</a></li>

<li><a href="Fixed-point_arithmetic" title="Fixed-point arithmetic">Fixed point</a></li>

<li><a href="Block_floating_point" title="Block floating point">Block floating point</a></li>

<li><a href="Floating-point_arithmetic" title="Floating-point arithmetic">Floating point</a>

<ul><li>Reduced precision

<ul><li><a href="Minifloat" title="Minifloat">Minifloat</a></li>

<li><a href="Half-precision_floating-point_format" title="Half-precision floating-point format">Half precision</a></li>

<li><a href="Bfloat16_floating-point_format" title="Bfloat16 floating-point format">bfloat16</a></li></ul></li>

<li><a href="Single-precision_floating-point_format" title="Single-precision floating-point format">Single precision</a></li>

<li><a href="Double-precision_floating-point_format" title="Double-precision floating-point format">Double precision</a></li>

<li><a href="Quadruple-precision_floating-point_format" title="Quadruple-precision floating-point format">Quadruple precision</a></li>

<li><a href="Octuple-precision_floating-point_format" title="Octuple-precision floating-point format">Octuple precision</a></li>

<li><a href="Extended_precision" title="Extended precision">Extended precision</a>

<ul><li><a href="Long_double" title="Long double">Long double</a></li></ul></li></ul></li>

<li><a href="Integer_(computer_science)" title="Integer (computer science)">Integer</a>

<ul><li><a href="Signedness" title="Signedness">signedness</a></li></ul></li>

<li><a href="Interval_arithmetic#Implementations" title="Interval arithmetic">Interval</a></li>

<li><a href="Rational_data_type" title="Rational data type">Rational</a></li></ul>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%"><a href="Pointer_(computer_programming)" title="Pointer (computer programming)">Pointer</a></th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-odd" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Memory_address" title="Memory address">Address</a>

<ul><li><a href="Physical_address" title="Physical address">physical</a></li>

<li><a href="Virtual_address_space" title="Virtual address space">virtual</a></li></ul></li>

<li><a href="Reference_(computer_science)" title="Reference (computer science)">Reference</a></li></ul>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%"><a href="Plain_text" title="Plain text">Text</a></th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-even" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Character_(computing)" title="Character (computing)">Character</a></li>

<li><a href="String_(computer_science)" title="String (computer science)">String</a>

<ul><li><a href="Null-terminated_string" title="Null-terminated string">null-terminated</a></li></ul></li></ul>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%"><a href="Composite_data_type" title="Composite data type">Composite</a></th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-odd" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Algebraic_data_type" title="Algebraic data type">Algebraic data type</a>

<ul><li><a href="Generalized_algebraic_data_type" title="Generalized algebraic data type">generalized</a></li></ul></li>

<li><a href="Array_(data_type)" title="Array (data type)">Array</a></li>

<li><a href="Associative_array" title="Associative array">Associative array</a></li>

<li><a href="Class_(computer_programming)" title="Class (computer programming)">Class</a></li>

<li><a href="Dependent_type" title="Dependent type">Dependent</a></li>

<li><a href="Intuitionistic_type_theory#Equality_type" title="Intuitionistic type theory">Equality</a></li>

<li><a href="Inductive_type" title="Inductive type">Inductive</a></li>

<li><a href="Intersection_type" title="Intersection type">Intersection</a></li>

<li><a href="Object_(computer_science)" title="Object (computer science)">Object</a>

<ul><li><a href="Metaobject" title="Metaobject">metaobject</a></li></ul></li>

<li><a href="Option_type" title="Option type">Option type</a></li>

<li><a href="Product_type" title="Product type">Product</a></li>

<li><a href="Record_(computer_science)" title="Record (computer science)">Record or Struct</a></li>

<li><a href="Refinement_type" title="Refinement type">Refinement</a></li>

<li><a href="Union_type" title="Union type">Union</a>

<ul><li><a href="Tagged_union" title="Tagged union">tagged</a></li></ul></li></ul>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%">Other</th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-even" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Boolean_data_type" title="Boolean data type">Boolean</a></li>

<li><a href="Bottom_type" title="Bottom type">Bottom type</a></li>

<li><a href="Container_(abstract_data_type)" title="Container (abstract data type)">Collection</a></li>

<li><a href="Enumerated_type" title="Enumerated type">Enumerated type</a></li>

<li><a href="Exception_handling" title="Exception handling">Exception</a></li>

<li><a href="Function_type" title="Function type">Function type</a></li>

<li><a href="Opaque_data_type" title="Opaque data type">Opaque data type</a></li>

<li><a href="Recursive_data_type" title="Recursive data type">Recursive data type</a></li>

<li><a href="Semaphore_(programming)" title="Semaphore (programming)">Semaphore</a></li>

<li><a href="Stream_(computing)" title="Stream (computing)">Stream</a></li>

<li><a href="Strongly_typed_identifier" title="Strongly typed identifier">Strongly typed identifier</a></li>

<li><a href="Type_class" title="Type class">Type class</a></li>

<li><a href="Empty_type" title="Empty type">Empty type</a></li>

</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="navbox-group" style="width:1%">Related topics</th><td class="navbox-list-with-group navbox-list navbox-odd" style="width:100%;padding:0"><div style="padding:0 0.25em">

<ul><li><a href="Abstract_data_type" title="Abstract data type">Abstract data type</a></li>

<li><a href="Boxing_(computer_programming)" title="Boxing (computer programming)">Boxing</a></li>

<li><a href="Data_structure" title="Data structure">Data structure</a></li>

<li><a href="Generic_programming" title="Generic programming">Generic</a></li>

<ul><li><a href="Metaclass" title="Metaclass">metaclass</a></li></ul></li>

<li><a href="Parametric_polymorphism" title="Parametric polymorphism">Parametric polymorphism</a></li>

<li><a href="Primitive_data_type" title="Primitive data type">Primitive data type</a></li>

<li><a href="Interface_(object-oriented_programming)" title="Interface (object-oriented programming)">Interface</a></li>

<li><a href="Subtyping" title="Subtyping">Subtyping</a></li>

<li><a href="Type_constructor" title="Type constructor">Type constructor</a></li>

<li><a href="Type_conversion" title="Type conversion">Type conversion</a></li>

<li><a href="Type_system" title="Type system">Type system</a></li>

<li><a href="Type_theory" title="Type theory">Type theory</a></li>

<li><a href="Variable_(computer_science)" title="Variable (computer science)">Variable</a></li></ul>

</div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div><div><div class="zim-footer">

This article is issued from <a class="external text" title="Last edited on 2025-08-07" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?title=Byte&oldid=1304738935">Wikipedia</a>. The text is available under <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0</a> unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

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