Bits, Bytes, and Storage

How can we relate to the terms Bits and Bytes?

• “This computer has a 64-bit processor with 4 Gigabytes of RAM and 200 Gigabytes of hard disk space”

• “My parents played Atari (8-bit) and I play Nintendo (64-bit)”

Key Terms

• Bits• Bytes• Binary numbers• All of the prefixes related to storage

– KB– MB– GB– TB

Bit1. bit = From a shortening of the

words “binary digit”

2. the basic unit of information for computers

3. 1 or 0 are the only values

Byte

1. Byte = 8 bits

2. Each keyboard character is stored as a Byte

3. Example A = 01000001

This is an excellent diagram

Text to binary conversionhttp://www.digitalcoding.com/tools/text-to-binary-conversion.html

The Leafs kicked some Hab arse last night

010101000110100001100101001000000110110001100101 0110000101100110011100110010000001101011011010010110001101101011011001010110010000100000011100110110111101101101011001010010000001001000011000010110001000100000011000010111001001110011011001010010000001101100011000010111001101110100001000000110111001101001011001110110100001110100

How does a computer processor understand bytes????

The processor is made of zillions of Transistors.

Transistor on = 1Transistor off = 0

9

• A transistor is a switch. • Switch on = 1• Switch off = 0

• The ”A” exists as a pattern in eight transistors, where some are “turned on” (charged) and others are not.

• Together these 8 transistors make up one byte.

Give this a shot…..

The Binary Math Game

UNITS Big & Way Big Bytes

• Byte a grouping of eight bits for instance --> 0110 0001

• Kb (kilobyte) about 1000 bytes• Mb (megabyte) about one thousand Kb

or one million bytes• Gb (gigabyte) about one thousand Mb

or one billion bytes• Tb (terabyte) is about one thousand Gb

or one trillion bytes

Terms for Storage Capacities

1 bit = 0 or 1 (b)8 bits = 1 byte (B)1 thousand bytes = kilobyte (KB)1 million bytes = megabyte (MB)

1 billion bytes = gigabyte (GB)1 trillion = terabyte (TB)

A file with size = 201 Bytes

MB of data

GB of data

Terabytes = a trillion bytes