Talk:Byte

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ihope127 (talk | contribs) at 17:25, 5 September 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Latest comment: 19 years ago by Ihope127 in topic =

The reason that a kilobyte is 2^10 is that the same numbers stored in the computer that the data represents are used to define the addresses where the numbers are, so a 10-bit address bus can address one 2^10th bytes (or a kilobyte).. A 20 bit address bus can address 2^20th bytes, or megabyte. And so on.. The IBM PC's used a 16-bit address bus on the CPU but the address bus was actually 20-bits, how this happened is that the Intel 8086 chips would waste an extra cycle to produce a address word of 20-bits, by using 16-bits of one word and 4 of another. This is why in some 8086 assembly programs you might see hexadecimal numbers to address memory like this: [00bb:aafe]. In fact the 8086 is the virtual machine for Intel chips following the 386 release. It's not efficient nor easy to use word sizes of 20-bits, 10-bits without loss as internally computers use 8, 16, 32, or 64 bit data busses. So your addressing of memory changes in purportion.. Indirect storage media like tapes, flash cards, and such, where the address word is loaded into the device before reading out the data (rather than sending the entire data word to the device), the storage on such devices can be of any length..


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I changed the text from "byte is a basic unit of storage" because bit is a basic unit of storage, byte is derived.

It could just as easily be said that the byte is the basic unit and the bit comes from making eighths of a byte. --Ihope127 17:25, 5 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

A few years ago I too thought byte meant 8 bits and my eyes were opend (by a lisp hacker as it happens). If you don't believe the claims about 7 bit byte and 9 bit byte and so on I suggest you look on the web.

I hope this article is an improvement.

--drj


I've also remember an etymology that byte originally stood for by eight, but the Jargon file says that even the first machines having bytes were not 8-bit. Oh well, maybe it's worthy just for the mnemonic value. --Chexum


i found some additional things for the table... they're really there and official. example: 5 EB = all the ever spoken things of human beings

Is the "doggabyte" unit for real? Reference? Also, do we really need articles about anything past exabyte, since these have no practical application yet and most probably never will?—Eloquence 23:10, Dec 31, 2003 (UTC)

I removed the links to nonabyte, doggabyte, nobibyte, and dogbibyte, because I realized that the fact that I had made those pages redirects to byte created a self-link situation. I think the other articles for absurdly large units are at least not so stubby that they have to go. As for practical application, remember when you thought no one could possibly ever fill up a whole gigabyte?! --Ed Cormany 23:40, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I'd still like to know if doggabyte is a real term. Google provides no credible reference (only a couple of websites mention it).—Eloquence
Supposing "doggabyte" is a real term, wouldn't the binary form be "dobibyte" instead of "dogbibyte"? Consider "zettabyte," which goes to "zebibyte." Also, "dogbibyte" is hard to say. --Bkell 08:11, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Nice article! Good work! Dpbsmith 02:00, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)


C for example defines byte to be synonymous with unsigned char -- this makes it sound as though standard C allows definitions of the form "byte foo". Marnanel 00:36, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)


I suggest removing mention of the "standards"-based terms, as they have not caught on and (likely) never will. Pgunn 15:30, 22 Feb 2004 (EST)

The "standards"-based terms (try to) redefine existing standards, 1KB=1024b, it shouldn't suddenly be 1KB=1000b. That should probably be mentioned in the article.
Simon Arlott 19:36, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Common usage does not imply "standard". The "kibi", "mebi", etc prefixes are IEC standards.
By the way, ask a hard drive manufacturer what a "gigabyte" is, and their answer will be "1 000 000 000 bytes", since this allows them to claim that a disk with 60 000 000 000 bytes is 60Gb, whereas common usage would call this a 55.9 Gib disk.
Jrv 5 July 2005 19:35 (UTC)

There is no mention in the article for why a kibibyte is different from a kilobyte. See this IEC article for several important reasons why 1000 != 1024.

Also, there is nothing in this entry about the potential confusion between "B" (SI abbreviation for Bel) and "B" (popular abbreviation for a byte).

Jrv 5 July 2005 19:35 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that anyone has ever actually been confused by this, but go ahead and mention it if you want. – Smyth\talk 5 July 2005 21:53 (UTC)

True or false??

True or false: it is very likely that the "kibibyte"-like terms will not get widely adopted anytime between now and 2040. 66.245.117.101 00:13, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Origin of the word byte ?

The line that comes closest to answering this questions is : "The word was coined by mutating the word bite so it would not be accidentally misspelled as bit." Now whats the relation between the word "bite" and the concept of the byte ? How did bite come up in the first place ? Jay 16:27, 16 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Ethymology of byte

From the polish byte (być=to be), als equivalent of german "wesend", i.e. the set of a class and his complement in a sign system or "univers du discours" [1]