Why are so many numbers in this field multiples of 8?

[bungusboy81]

I noticed that pattern a while back and I always wondered why

[WhitetailAni]

Which field?
If you mean tech, part of it is because of the way we count bits and bytes.

1 byte = 8 bits.

There's probably more, but I believe this is the core of it.

Edited February 27, 2021 by FakeKGB
swapped units

[bungusboy81]

Just now, FakeKGB said:

Which field?
If you mean tech, part of it is because of the way we count bits and bytes.

1 bit = 8 bytes.

There's probably more, but I believe this is the core of it.

Oh, that makes sense. Thank you!

[SupaKomputa]

Because of BYTE (one alphabetical character) which is consist of 8 Bits.

[Lurick]

To put it simply, a single byte (8 bits) was the smallest unit that could represent a single character. Additionally, a byte can represent 2 nibbles. Each nibble is 4 bits, which is the smallest number of bits that can encode any numeric digit from 0 to 9

[SupaKomputa]

1 minute ago, FakeKGB said:

1 bit = 8 bytes.

It's the reverse.

1 bit is either 1 or 0, on or off.

So 1 byte is 8 on or off.

For example the letter A is "01000001" in bits.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, SupaKomputa said:

It's the reverse.

Oops, messed that up.

Meant 1 byte = 8 bits.

[LloydLynx]

1 or 0 = bit

4 bits = 1 nibble

8 bits = 1 byte

If you keep doubling, you'll get 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096... and so on

There are units like kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte... that are 1024 of the previous one(RAM is almost always measured with this). And units like kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte... that are 1000 of the previous one.

I hope this gives the general idea of things, and gives some info to steer you in the right direction to research it more.

[Moonzy]

should say that it's actually because computer data is represented in base 2 (1 and 0) so it's all multiples of 2

2^1 = 2

2^2 = 4

...

2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024... these are the most common ones you'll see

[SupaKomputa]

2 minutes ago, LloydLynx said:

RAM is almost always measured with this

I would like to add to this.

Byte rating usually to measure capacity like in storage & memory.

Bits usually for rating data transmission, like 1 Gigabits per second which means you can transfer 1/8 gigabytes of data per second.

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Byte rating usually to measure capacity like in storage & memory

emphasis on USUALLY

because people do whatever they want, use b and B interchangably

 

RAM is rated in bytes, but the chiplets on RAM is rated in bits

[-iSynthesis]

To add a bit more, storage is almost always measured to the base of 2. One byte is 2^3 bit, 2 byte, 16 bit, is 2^4 and so forth.

Kibibyte, Mebibyte etc. are also to the base of 2. One Kibibyte is 2^10, Mebibyte is 2^20. 

With 64 bit systems, the word length of a storage element is 64 bit or 2^6 bit. This means, that the logic unit of a processor can process a 64 bit long piece of information in one step. 

 

To answer your question, we use multiples of 8 because 8 bits, or a byte, is the amount of information needed to encode a single ASCII letter. Our system is based on that pretty much. 

[Eigenvektor]

25 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Because of BYTE (one alphabetical character) which is consist of 8 Bits.

Not quite correct. Historically a byte was defined as the number of bits used to encode a single character and/or the smallest addressable unit of memory. These days that is typically 8 bit, but other sizes exist(ed) (e.g. 6-bit byte or 9-bit byte).

 

17 minutes ago, -iSynthesis said:

To answer your question, we use multiples of 8 because 8 bits, or a byte, is the amount of information needed to encode a single ASCII letter. Our system is based on that pretty much. 

ASCII actually only uses 7 bits (128 characters). On e.g. MS-DOS you had 8 bits and the additional characters this enables where used for a code page that contained additional (language specific) characters, but they are not part of the original ASCII standard.

 

These days we have Unicode (e.g. UTF-8) that retains backwards compatibility with ASCII while also being able to encode additional characters using variable-width character encoding.

[RejZoR]

Because it's called binary data. 1 and 0. 2 bits. And basically everything is extrapolated from that. It's basically as founding element as atoms are for real world.

 

@FakeKGB

It's the other way around. 1 byte is 8 bits

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, RejZoR said:

It's the other way around. 1 byte is 8 bits

I know - I typed the wrong units.

Though I edited it almost an hour ago...

[whm1974]

There is Fuzzy Logic which based three.