Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
"BYTES" is a plural of: byte. |
Date "BYTES" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1532. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A byte is commonly used as a unit of storage measurement in computers. It is one of the basic integral data types in computing. The byte is often used to specify the size or amount of computer memory or storage, regardless of the type of data stored in it. Such numbers can get very large, which lead to the use of prefixes.
A byte has several meanings, all closely related:
The term byte was coined by Werner Buchholz in 1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer. Originally it was described as one to six bits; typical I/O equipment of the period used six-bit units. The move to an eight-bit byte happened in late 1956, and this size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the System/360. The word was coined by mutating the word bite so it would not be accidentally misspelled as bit.
- A contiguous sequence of a fixed number of bits. On modern computers, an eight-bit byte is by far the most common. Certain older models have used six-, seven-, or nine-bit bytes -- for instance on the 36-bit architecture of the PDP-10. A byte is always atomic on the system, meaning that it is the smallest addressable unit. An eight-bit byte can hold 256 possible values (28 = 256) -- enough to store an unsigned integer ranging from 0 to 255, a signed integer from -128 to 127, or an extended ASCII character.
- A contiguous sequence of bits that comprises a sub-field of a longer sequence known as a word. On some computers it is possible to address bytes of arbitrary length. This usage is reflected, for example, in LDB and DPB assembler instructions for field extraction on a PDP-10, which survive as bytewise operations in Common Lisp; and in the six-bit bytes of the IBM 1401.
- A datatype in certain programming languages. C for example defines byte to be synonymous with unsigned char -- an integer datatype capable of holding at least 256 different values.
The eight-bit byte is often called an octet in formal contexts such as industry standards, as well as in networking. This is also the word used for the eight-bit quantity in many non-English languages, where the pun on bite does not translate.
Half of an eight-bit byte (four bits) is sometimes called (playfully) a nibble (sometimes spelled nybble) or more formally a hex digit. The nibble is often called a semioctet in a networking context and also by some standards organisations.
As a unit of measure, bytes is abbreviated as B; hence MB for megabytes. Likewise, the lowercase b is used for bits: hence, a 5 Mb/s network segment carries five megabits per second, while a 90 GB hard drive carries 90 gigabytes. Computer memory and storage are usually denominated in bytes, while network speed is denominated in bits, and parallel bus speed in hertz.
Standards organizations have proposed binary prefixes for the powers of two often used as multiples of bytes, e.g., mebibyte rather than megabyte for 220 bytes -- but these have not caught on in common usage.
A comparative table of base-10 and base-2 bytes
- 1 kilobyte [kB] = 1000 (103) byte
- 1 megabyte [MB] = 1 000 000 (106) byte
- 1 gigabyte [GB] = 1 000 000 000 (109) byte
- 1 terabyte [TB] = 1 000 000 000 000 (1012) byte
- 1 petabyte [PB] = 1 000 000 000 000 000 (1015) byte
- 1 kibibyte [KiB] = 1024 (210) byte
- 1 mebibyte [MiB] = 1 048 576 (220) byte
- 1 gibibyte [GiB] = 1 073 741 824 (230) byte
- 1 tebibyte [TiB] = 1 099 511 627 776 (240) byte
- 1 pebibyte [PiB] = 1 125 899 906 842 624 (250) byte
Byte was also the name of a popular computer industry magazine, see Byte magazine.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Byte."
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Let's skip the sound bytes and cut straight to the chase (24; writing credit: Mark Clompus; Marvin Close) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Love Bytes (2001) Comedy Bytes (2000) Bits and Bytes 2 (1991) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Periodicals |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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High Tech |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | Online Image: 55,102 bytes; 740 x 595 pixels |  |
| Photo #: NH 61674. Credit: NAVY. | |||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Business | The monthly service cost is estimated to be around $24.00. T-Link charges are based on bytes transmitted. (references) | |
Industry representatives are concerned that the amendment allows up to 10 percent of bytes to be copied from the Internet. (references) | ||
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "BYTES" is generally used as a noun (plural) -- approximately 99.47% of the time. "BYTES" is used about 187 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (plural) | 99.47% | 186 | 22,556 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.53% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 187 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Country | Name |
| South Africa | Bytes Technology Group Ltd. |
| (more examples...) |
Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.
Expressions using "BYTES": green bytes ♦ loose bytes. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
bytes.com elaborate | 5 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "BYTES"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
French | octets. (various references) | |
German | Bytes. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ytesbay.(various references) | |
Russian | младший бойт (low order byte, low order bytes). (various references) | |
Spanish | los bytes. (various references) | |
Swedish | tecken (character, characters, emblem, evidence, index, indication, indicator, mark, motion, note, sign, signal, symbol, symptom, token, trace), grupper av bits. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words ending with "BYTES": gigabytes, kilobytes, megabytes, terabytes, yottabytes, zettabytes. (additional references) | |
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"BYTES" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: bieten, Bituis, Blytons, boyest, butes, byest, byet, Byett, Byrte, bytea, bytec, byted, bytei, Bytek, bytel, byter, bytex, bytez, bythe, Bytom, gytes, kbyte, lytes, wytes. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "BYTES" (pronounced bī"ts) |
| 4 | b ī" t s | bites. |
| 3 | -ī" t s | cites, delights, excites, fights, flights, heights, ignites, incites, invites, kites, knights, lights, mites, nights, nonwhites, recites, reunites, rewrites, rights, rites, sights, sites, slights, Stylites, tights, unites, whites, Wrights, writes. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "b-e-s-t-y" | |
-1 letter: best, bets, beys, byes, byte, stey, stye, tyes. | |
-2 letters: bet, bey, bye, bys, set, sty, tye, yes, yet. | |
-3 letters: be, by, es, et, ye. | |
| Words containing the letters "b-e-s-t-y" | |
+2 letters: barytes, beastly, betrays, bheesty, obesity, subtype. | |
+3 letters: absently, basketry, bayonets, beltways, bestiary, biotypes, blistery, blustery, botryose, bystreet, eyebolts, flybelts, obtusely, sobriety, subentry, subtlety, subtypes, sybarite, symbiote, tensibly, typebars. | |
+4 letters: barytones, bestially, betrayals, betrayers, biacetyls, bimethyls, biosafety, butylates, butylenes, butyrates, bystander, bystreets, estimably, eurybaths, gigabytes, kilobytes, megabytes, obscenity, presbyter, stylebook, stylobate, subsystem, subtilely, sybarites, symbiotes, tabooleys, terabytes, verbosity, ytterbias. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Usage Frequency 8. Names: Company Usage | 9. Expressions 10. Expressions: Internet 11. Translations: Modern 12. Derivations | 13. Rhymes 14. Anagrams 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
