Byte

Pronunciation

• IPA: /baɪt/
• Rhymes: -aɪt
• Homophones: bight, bite

Origin

Expansion of bit, coined by Dr. Werner Buchholz in July 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM 7030 computer.http://www.trailing-edge.com/~bobbemer/BYTE.HTMhttp://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/102636400.txthttp://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/byte.html

Full definition of byte

Noun

1. (computing) A sequence of adjacent bits (binary digits) that can be operated on as a unit by a computer; the smallest usable machine word; nearly always eight bits, which can represent an integer from 0 to 255 or a single character of text.
2. (computing) A unit of computing storage equal to eight bitsThe word “hello” fits into five bytes of ASCII code.

Synonyms

• (unit of storage) B
• (eight bits) octet

Derived terms

• kilobyte
• megabyte
• gigabyte
• terabyte
• petabyte
• exabyte
• yottabyte

Related terms

• Previous: bit
• Next: kilobyte

• Previous: nybble
• Next: word

Anagrams

• ybet