A byte is a fundamental unit of digital information in computing and digital communications. It typically consists of eight bits, which are binary digits that can be either 0 or 1. This grouping of eight bits allows a byte to represent 256 different values, ranging from 0 to 255 in decimal notation. The byte is used to encode a single character of text in a computer and is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures[2][4][6].
Historically, the size of a byte was hardware-dependent and varied, but the modern standard of eight bits has become ubiquitous due to its convenience and efficiency in representing data. This standard is documented in ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993 and codified in the international standard IEC 80000-13[2].
Bytes are crucial in various aspects of computing, including data storage, memory addressing, and data transmission. For example, in programming languages like C, C++, and Java, a byte is a defined data type used to store characters and small integers[2]. In data transmission, a byte is the smallest unit of data that can be transmitted over a network, often referred to as an octet to avoid ambiguity[2][6].
The byte's importance extends to measuring digital data, where larger units like kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), and terabytes (TB) are used to quantify data storage and memory capa...
