Bits vs Bytes Comparison

Bit is the most basic storage unit of the computer systems where Byte is a basic storage unit that contains 8 bits. Bits and Bytes are popular terms used to express a different type of information about a computer device, product or service.

What is Bit?

Bit is a storage unit that can only store a single value which can be 0 or 1. It may seem strange but this is very useful for computers where their CPU only processes 0s and 1s. If we wan to store more information like 0101 as bit type, we should store 4 bit.

What Is Byte?

The byte is a basic storage unit where 8 bits are stored. We can say that byte is 8 times bigger than a bit. Even bit is the simplest unit usage of the byte is popular because of the sizes f the storage unit, the processing capability of the processing unit and speed of the networks. An example 10101010 is 8 bits and equal to a 1 byte. The term byte first used in 1956 in the design of the IBM Strech computer.

Bit vs Bytes

Bits and bytes has a parent and child relationship according to their sizes. Let’s compare bits and bytes from different aspects.

• A byte is 8 times bigger than a bit.
• A bit is 8 times lower than a byte.
• A byte can hold and store 8 bits.
• A bit can hold only 1/8 of a byte.
• The byte is presented with uppercase B where the bit is presented with lowercase b .
• Kbps means kilobits per second where KBps means Kilobytes per second
• Bit and byte both can be used to specify the storage size of a variable in programming.
• A bit is generally used to specify the CPU architecture like 32 bit or 64 bit
• A byte is used to specify the size of the file.
• Every ASCII character holds 1 byte which is equal to 8 bits.
• A Bit stores binary values 0 and 1.
• A byte can store octal values like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 etc.
• The ASCII letter K can be expressed with bits 01001011 and expressed with bytes 4B.
• Quad is an intermedia storage unit between bit and byte which can store 4 bits but not popular as bit and byte.