Basic unit of memory
The basic unit memory of measurement computers use is a bit. A bit represents a 0 or a 1, and you can think of it as a kind of on or off switch. When the switch is on and electricity is running, that’s a 1. When the switch is off and the electricity stops flowing, that’s a 0. In a nutshell, all a computer does is manage these pulses of electrical energy, these ones and zeros.
We don’t usually talk in bits. The smallest reasonable size that we deal with on a computer is a byte. A byte is 8 bits, and as you can see, that is still pretty small. It takes about a byte to store a single character such as, say, this one:
A. Or this one: B. Writing “hack” requires four bytes, or 32 bits.
- K, kB, and KB are abbreviations for kilobyte, which means approximately 1,000 bytes (but, to be exact, is 1,024 bytes).
- M and MB are abbreviations for megabyte, which means approximately 1,000,000 bytes or 1,000KB (but, to be exact, is 1,048,576 bytes).
- G and GB are abbreviations for gigabyte, which means approximately 1,000,000,000 bytes, 1,000,000KB, or 1000MB (but to be exact, is 1,073,741,824 bytes).
