Author – Nathan King
Week 2 Assignment
Bit ( binary digit definition)
Bit which is short for binary definition is the smallest piece of data in in a computer. A
binary digit has a single binary value it is either 0 or 1.While computers usually
provide instructions which test and manipulate bits, They generally are designed to
store data execute instructions in bit multiples called bytes.
Most computer systems have 8 bits in a byte. A bits value is usually dependant on
the level of electrical charge in a single capacitor within a memory device. Half a byte
which four bits is called a nibble and the term octet is used for an 8 bit unit instead of
a byte. In telecommunication the bit rate is the number of bits that are transmitted in
a given time period which is usually a second.
Source – www.whatis.techtarget.com/definition/bit-binary-digit
Byte definition
A byte is a unit of measurement used to measure data. A byte contains eight binary
digits or eight zeros and ones. Originally the byte was developed to store a single
character since 256 values are sufficient to represent standard lowercase and
uppercase letters. However since certain languages have more than 256 characters,
modern character encoding, such as utf- 16, use two bytes or 16 bits for each
character.
Although the byte was originally designed to measure character data, it is now a
fundamental unit of measurement for all data storage.
Source – www.techterms.com/definition/byte
Megabyte definition
A megabyte is 10 6 or 1,000,000 bytes. A megabyte is equal to 1,000 kilobytes and
precedes the gigabytes unit of measurement. Although a megabyte is technically a
1,000,000 bytes, megabytes are quite often used synonymously with mebibytes
which contain 1,048,576 bytes.
Megabytes are used to measure the size of large files an example would be a three
minute song saved in a compressed format may be roughly three megabytes in size
while the uncompressed version may take up to 30mb of space.
Source – www.techterms.com/definition/megabyte
Binary system definition
A binary system is a number system that uses two values (0,1,on,off) to represent
codes and data. Since zeros and ones can be simply represented by two voltages
the binary system is seen as the foundation on which technology is built.
Source – www.businessdictionary.com/definition/binary-system.html
Ram definition
Random access memory also known as RAM is made up of small memory chips
which form a memory module. The modules are then installed in the RAM slots on
the motherboard of your computer.
When you open a program it gets loaded from your hard drive into the RAM. The
reason being is that reading data from RAM is much faster than reading data from
your hard drive. The more RAM in your computer the more data it can load from your
hard drive to your RAM which essentially increases the speed of your computer.
Adding RAM is seen as more effective to your computers performance than
upgrading CPU.
Source – www.techterms.com/definition/ram