<P> The byte ( / ˈbaɪt / ) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits . Historically , the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures . The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size -- byte - sizes from 1 to 48 bits are known to have been used in the past . The modern de-facto standard of eight bits , as documented in ISO / IEC 2382 - 1 : 1993 , is a convenient power of two permitting the values 0 through 255 for one byte . The international standard IEC 80000 - 13 codified this common meaning . Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers optimize for this common usage . The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the eight - bit size . </P>
<P> The byte ( / ˈbaɪt / ) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits . Historically , the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures . The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size -- byte - sizes from 1 to 48 bits are known to have been used in the past . The modern de-facto standard of eight bits , as documented in ISO / IEC 2382 - 1 : 1993 , is a convenient power of two permitting the values 0 through 255 for one byte . The international standard IEC 80000 - 13 codified this common meaning . Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers optimize for this common usage . The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the eight - bit size . </P>
what is the standard unit of data storage
what is the standard unit of data storage
byte
byte