Units of storage

2. Bit, nibble and byte

Bit

A single bit is the smallest size of digital data and has only two values - zero and one.

Roll over the image to see the two types of binary bits

Byte

A 'byte' contains 8 bits, for example 11101001 is a byte.

A single keyboard character that you type, such as the letter A or the letter T takes up one byte of storage.

Roll over the image to see the letter A in binary format (ascii code)

Nibble

This is not a very commonly used term compared to bit and byte. It is the term given to a group of four bits. Therefore two nibbles make a byte.

The reason it is not very common is because most microprocessors use groups of 8 bits and higher i.e. They use one or more bytes to process data. Not many devices make use of a nibble.