Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (OCR) GCSE Computer Science Paper 2 Practice

A byte is a fundamental unit of digital information storage and transmission, consisting of 8 bits. In the context of computer systems, each bit represents a binary digit, which can be either a 0 or a 1. The byte is significant because it is typically the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures, making it essential for data representation, processing, and storage.

For example, a byte can represent 256 different values (from 0 to 255) because it can be configured in various combinations of bits. This allows for a wide range of applications, such as encoding characters in text files using standards like ASCII, where each character is represented by an 8-bit byte.

When considering the other options, they represent different quantities of bits but do not align with the standard definition of a byte. Four bits refer to a nibble, which can represent 16 different values. Sixteen bits can represent 65,536 different values, and thirty-two bits can represent over four billion values. While these quantities are used in various contexts, they do not define a byte.