It's all about bits and bytes. Bytes, Bits, Kilobits - How much of what is in what? Encoding integers and real numbers

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Unit	Abbreviation	How many
bit	b	0 or 1bit
byte	B	8 bit
kilobit	kbit (kb)	1,000 bits
kilobyte	KByte (KB)	1024 bytes
megabit	mbit (mb)	1,000 kilobits
megabyte	MByte (MB)	1024 kilobytes
gigabit	gbit (gb)	1,000 megabits
gigabyte	GByte (GB)	1024 megabytes
terabit	tbit (tb)	1,000 gigabits
terabyte	TB (TB)	1024 gigabytes

Byte(byte) - a unit of storage and processing of digital information. Most often, a byte is considered to be eight bits, in which case it can take one of 256 (2'8) different values. In order to emphasize that an eight-bit byte is meant, the term “octet” (Latin octet) is used in the description of network protocols.

Kilobyte(kB, KB, KB) m., skl. - a unit of measurement of the amount of information, equal to 1000 or 1024 (2’10) standard (8-bit) bytes, depending on the context. Used to indicate the amount of memory in various electronic devices.
1 kilobyte (KB) = 8 kilobits (KB)

Megabyte(MB, M, MB) m., skl. - a unit of measurement of the amount of information equal, depending on the context, to 1,000,000 (10’6) or 1,048,576 (2’20) standard (8-bit) bytes.

Gigabyte(GB, G, GB) - a multiple unit of measurement of the amount of information, equal to 2’30 standard (8-bit) bytes or 1024 megabytes. Used to indicate the amount of memory in various electronic devices.

Terabyte(TB, TB) m., skl. - a unit of measurement of the amount of information equal to 1,099,511,627,776 (2’40) standard (8-bit) bytes or 1024 gigabytes. Used to indicate the amount of memory in various electronic devices.

Petabyte(PByte, PB) m., skl. - a unit of measurement of the amount of information equal to 25’0 standard (8-bit) bytes or 1024 terabytes. Used to indicate the amount of memory in various electronic devices.

Exabyte(Ebyte, E, EB) - a unit of measurement of the amount of information equal to 26’0 standard (8-bit) bytes or 1024 petabytes. Used to indicate the amount of memory in various electronic devices.

Zettabyte(Zbyte, Z, ZB) - a unit of measurement of the amount of information equal to 27’0 standard (8-bit) bytes or 1024 exabytes. Used to indicate the amount of memory in various electronic devices.

Yottabyte(Ybyte, Y, YB) - a unit of measurement of the amount of information equal to 1024 standard (8-bit) bytes or 1000 zettabytes. Used to indicate the amount of memory in various electronic devices.

1 Yottabyte can be represented as:

103 = 1,000 Zettabytes

106 = 1,000,000 Exabytes

109 = 1,000,000,000 Petabytes

1012 = 1,000,000,000,000 Terabytes

1015 = 1,000,000,000,000,000 Gigabytes

1018 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Megabytes

1021 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kilobytes

1024 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Bytes

Converter of quantities byte, bit, kilobit, kilobyte, megabit, megabyte, gigabit, gigabyte, terabit, terabyte, petabit, petabyte, exbit, exbyte

7.2 terabytes for one the size of a regular DVD disc

Australian researchers have created technology that theoretically allows 7.2 terabytes of data to be written onto a single disc the size of a regular DVD. This was reported by Nature News, and the researchers' article appeared in the journal Nature.

In modern DVD drives, information is recorded using a laser beam that burns indentations on the surface of the disc. The new technology works in a similar way. The main difference is that instead of creating indentations on the surface of the disk, gold nanopins melt.

Scientists were able to achieve such a high density of information recording using several technical techniques. First, the researchers used lasers of multiple colors. The fact is that rays of a certain wavelength affect only pins with a certain ratio of length and thickness. Second, the researchers used beams with different polarizations that hit pins oriented in a specific way.

Using rays of different colors and different polarizations, it seems possible to record information on the same region of the disk several times. For example, two polarizations and three colors (for a total of six possible combinations) can store 1.6 terabytes of data on a DVD-sized disc. If you add another polarization option, you get a 7.2 terabyte drive.

To read the information, the researchers use a weak laser beam that does not melt the nanopins. In this case, the output produces a readable signal: it has been empirically established that nanopins “respond” to a weak laser much better than, for example, spherical nanoparticles into which the pins turn after melting.

The weakness of the new technology is that researchers use laser pulses of very short duration - on the order of several femtoseconds. Such lasers are expensive and difficult to manufacture. Scientists hope that further development of technology will overcome this limitation. They expect industrial use of their discovery to begin around the 2020s. ♌

Catching Goldfish on the Internet

What are Bits and Bytes?

Let's figure out what a bit and a byte are. Bit, the smallest unit that measures the amount of information. One contains little information, unlike a group of bits. In a computer, all data is stored and processed in the form of characters. Usually only two characters are used - the numbers 0 and 1. The combination of these two numbers is called binary code, and the numbers themselves are usually called binary digits or bits for short. The computer distinguishes between 0 and 1 thanks to electrical impulses in electronic circuits. If there is no impulse in the circuit, this is the number 0, if there is an impulse, then this is 1. Thus, in the form of a combination of 0 and 1, absolutely all information from photographs to music is stored inside the computer. Along with the concept of a bit, the concept of byte is used.

A collection of 8 bits of computer data is called a byte. 8 bits provide the basis for representing characters such as the letter "A" and binary arithmetic. That is, a byte is a command of bits responsible for a specific detail in the file. Each byte has a unique address in computer memory. By convention, bits and bytes are numbered from 0 to 7 from right to left. For example: the bit number is 76543210, and its value is 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 and as a result, if you transfer this value to the printer, the letter “A” will be generated there. The number of enabled bits in a byte must be odd. When a command is addressed to a byte, the computer checks that byte and if the number of bits turned on is even, the system throws an error. A parity error can be the result of a hardware failure or a random occurrence, but it is very rare.

During data processing, electrical impulses pass through electronic circuits in the computer. Circuits are made up of conductors and microelectronic devices called logic gates. Pulses passing through these valves can be “quenched”. This is how the data is processed. By combining logic gates, complex combinations are created that perform operations - remember, compare, add, compare numbers, etc.

Electronic circuits are located in silicon wafers. Each chip can contain more than a million circuits, and their layout determines the type of work they do.
The microcircuits are located on special plates, namely on printed circuit boards. The board itself has printed strips through which electricity passes to the microcircuits. Metal tracks called buses carry bytes, each bus containing several of these tracks. One track transmits one byte.

Buses are divided into three types: data bus, control bus and address bus. The data bus exchanges data between the processor and input devices, and between the processor and the computer's memory. Instructions from the processor to all computer nodes are transmitted via the control bus. The address bus transmits information about the location or address of data.

Bits and bytes are quite small quantities, so they are used with the prefixes kilo, mega and giga. Let's now talk about the value that measures Internet speed. Internet speed is the amount of information sent and received by your personal computer per unit of time. The quality of the time unit is a second, and the quality of the amount of information received is kilobits or megabits. For example, if your speed shows 128 Kbps, that means your connection is carrying 128 kilobits, which equates to 16 kilobytes. In order to find out whether this is a lot or a little, use tests to determine the speed of your Internet connection.

In the modern age of high technology, information is of great importance. Every day a person passes through himself and his gadgets a huge flow of information, so it is necessary to understand the units of measurement of information. In particular, for many people the most pressing question is how many megabytes are in a gigabyte, since this helps to take into account the required amount of traffic provided by the Internet connection provider. In practice, you may also often need to convert megabytes to bytes or megabits to megabytes.

In modern computing technology (computers), the smallest unit of information is a bit. One bit encodes one single character in the binary system. That is, one bit allows you to write the value “0” or “1” in any of the bits.

How many bits are in a byte

It is obvious that it is impossible to encode any number with one bit carrying only one number. Therefore, the next unit of measurement was the byte, consisting of 8 bits. The bits within a byte record an eight-bit binary code.

1		1	1		1	1	1
2 7	2 6	2 5	2 4	2 3	2 2	2 1	2

In the first row of the table we wrote 1 byte of information, namely “10110111”. In order to understand what number is encoded by this byte, it is necessary to raise two to the power corresponding to the digit of each bit from right to left, starting from the zero digit. If in any bit of the byte there is a bit containing “0” (in this case, these are the third and sixth bits), then this bit does not need to be summed. Thus, the number we encoded in 1 byte is 183. Accordingly, the maximum number will look like this: 11111111 and will be equal to 256.

Other units of information

After we have figured out that 1 byte consists of 8 bits, it is worth studying the following “high” units of measurement. They are formed by prefixes to a byte from SI (system international),

Kilo,
Mega,
Giga,
Tera.

The difficulty here is that when moving from one prefix to another, it is necessary to use a multiple of 1024, and not 1000, accepted in physical units of measurement. Accordingly, 1 kilobyte contains 1024 bytes, and to convert megabytes into bytes, you will need to multiply the volume of information in MB twice by 1024. Answering the question of what 1 gigabyte is equal to in bytes, you will need to divide the volume of bytes by 1024 three times.

Table of information units

In order to quickly navigate the units of information and be able to quickly convert megabytes to gigabytes, you can use the following table of units of information:

	Bit	Byte	Kilobyte	MB	Gigabyte
Bit	1	8	8192	8338608	8589934592
Byte	8	1	1024	1048576	1073741824
Kilobyte	8192	1024	1	1024	1048576
Megabyte	8338608	1048576	1024	1	1024
Gigabyte	8589934592	1073741824	1048576	1024	1
Calculation of units of information from bit to gigabyte

By intersecting rows and columns, you can find out how many bytes are in a kilobyte and even convert gigabytes to bits.

A common mistake when choosing a tariff plan

Any Internet provider that provides you with access to the Internet offers a large number of tariffs to choose from. In this case, the Internet connection speed is designated as “Mb/s” or “mbps”, which means “megabit per second”, while a large number of people mistakenly take this designation for “megabyte per second”, and thus get the speed at the output Internet connections are 8 times slower. Now you know how many megabits are in a megabyte and you can easily convert megabytes to megabits. For convenience, you can use a special byte converter to convert bytes.

Thus, if the tariff plan specifies an Internet connection speed of 40mbps, then when downloading files from the Internet, you will have a speed of 5 MB per second. After all, files downloaded from the network are measured in bytes, not in bits. The whole point here is that when receiving and transmitting data on the Internet, you constantly send and receive code, and as you already know, encoding is carried out using bits, so your Internet provider is forced to indicate the speed of the Internet connection in megabits (mbps), forcing you to convert megabits to megabytes. In order to find out how many kilobytes of mobile Internet your operator provides, you need to read the relevant tariff documents.

How long does it take to download a file?

When downloading audio, video and other files from the Internet, you need to understand how long it will take to receive this data. For example, an average full-length film in HD quality with good dubbing will have a size of about 5 gigabytes. It’s easy to calculate that 5 gigabytes = 5120 MB = 40960 megabits. All that remains is to divide the file size in megabits by the Internet connection speed in the same megabits. In the case of an Internet connection of 40 Mbit/s, downloading the file will take 1024 seconds, which is just over 17 minutes.

Now you are familiar with how many bytes are in a megabyte, answering that there are 1048576 bytes in 1 megabyte, and you can easily convert kilobits to megabits.

I think you already know about bits and bytes, and about kilobytes and megabits too... but do you know everything about them? Let's check, please answer my question:

How do you think, how many bytes are there in one kilobyte?? Maybe 1024? Or is it still 1000?

The correct answer is in this IT lesson.

Now let's remember (or learn) about the basic units of data measurement.

Bit (bit) – a basic unit of measurement of information, can contain only one binary digit. A bit can only take two values: “0” or “1”.

Byte (byte) is also a unit of information amount, one byte is equal to eight bits (1 Byte = 8 bits).

These are fairly small amounts of data (comparable to measuring weight in “grams”), so...

Prefixes K, M, G, T (“kilo-”, “kibi-”, etc.)

...to measure large amounts of data, multiple prefixes are used (it's like " kilo gram"). The prefix we are familiar with is “ kilo-" means multiplying by 1000 (10 3), but in the binary number system they use two to the tenth power (2 10).

Let's look into this confusing issue together.

History of the introduction of binary prefixes

To denote the quantity 2 10 = 1024 bytes, introduced the binary prefix " TO"(namely the capital letter "K"), but in colloquial speech the unit "K" began to be called " kilo", which is not quite the same thing. To avoid confusion, we introduced names for the prefixes:

TO- "kibi"
M- "mebi"
G- “bend”
T- “you”...

Those. second syllable changed from usual to " bi», « bi Narny".

But the confusion did not disappear; many deciphered “K” and “M” with the usual “ kilo" And " mega" Even international standards have interpreted the decoding of binary prefixes differently. In addition, manufacturers added fuel to the fire contributed to the confusion of the situation (some considered 2 10, others 10 3).

As a result, in order to completely remove the discrepancy, not only the names were changed, but also the prefixes:

Ki- "kibi"
Mi- "mebi"
Gi- “bend”
Tee- “you”...

Do you think it helped? Of course not :)

In everyday life they say “kilo”, in Windows OS programs they write “K”, in Linux they mean “Ki”, manufacturers of hard and optical drives write “K” but mean “Ki”, etc.

What should an ordinary user do?

To summarize all that has been said, today there are three options for using binary prefixes, and we will summarize them in three tables.

1. Common use of binary prefixes

In the file properties, almost all programs, and even the Windows operating system itself, use the prefix in the form of a capital letter “ TO», « M», « G" etc. RAM manufacturers use the same principle. That is, you can use the following table:

This "K" is actually the binary prefix "kibi" (not "kilo" as everyone says).

2. Correct use of binary prefixes

In other operating systems, as well as in professional reviews of serious IT publications, they immediately write “ Kib», « MiB», « GiB"so that there is no doubt about what we are talking about.

3. Use of decimal prefixes

Manufacturers of storage devices (hard drives (HDDs), flash memory cards, as well as DVDs and BDs) use decimal prefixes. The same prefixes are used to indicate data transfer speed (100 Mbit/s = 100,000,000 bit/s, more on this in the next IT lesson).

If the prefix " kilo», « mega», « giga", etc., then the following relationships are meant:

Where did the 70 gigabytes on your hard drive go???

Let's see how Windows sees two hard drives 500 GB and 1 TB:

You probably already guessed why the hard drive has a capacity of 1 Terabyte in Windows OS it is displayed as 931 GB, A not 1000.

Manufacturers believe that it 1 000 000 000 kilo byte, and Windows OS divides by 1024 and receives 976,562,500 TO byte (kibi byte) or 931 GB (gibi byte).

So, don’t scold the manufacturers and especially the computer company, everything is measured correctly, but with different tape measures :)

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. What units of information do you know? You've probably heard about bytes, bits, as well as megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. However, it is not always clear how these quantities and how can you convert, for example, bytes to megabytes, bits into bytes, and gigabytes into terabytes.

The difficulty lies in the fact that we are used to operating with units of measurement in the decimal number system (everything is simple there - if there is a prefix “kilo”, then this is equivalent to multiplying by a thousand, etc.). But when measuring the volume of stored or use values from the binary system, where to convert, for example, megabytes to gigabytes, it will not be enough to carry out the usual division by a thousand. Why? Let's figure it out.

What is a byte/bit and how many bits are in a byte?

Described below units of information used in computer technology, for example, to measure the amount of RAM or the size of hard drives. The minimum unit of information is called a bit, followed by a byte, and then there are derivatives of the byte: kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, etc. What is noteworthy is that, despite the prefixes kilo-, mega-, giga-, converting these values into bytes is not a task, because simple multiplication by a thousand, million or billion is not applicable here. Why? Read below.

Also, similar units are used to measure the speed of information transmission (for example, through an Internet channel) - kilobits, megabits, gigabits, etc. Since this is speed, it refers to the number of bits (kilobits, megabits, gigabits, etc.) transmitted per second. How many bits are there in a byte and how to convert a kilobyte to a kilobit? Let's talk about this right now.

As you all know, a computer only works with numbers in the binary system, namely with zeros and ones (“Boolean algebra”, if anyone took it in college or school). One bit of information is a bit and it can take only two values - zero or one (there is a signal - there is no signal. I think that with the question what is a beat it became more or less clear.

Go ahead. What then is a byte? This is a little more complicated. One byte consists of eight bits(in the binary system), each of which represents a power of two (from zero to two to the seventh - counting from right to left), as shown in the figure below:

This can also be written as:

11101001

It is not difficult to understand that the total possible combinations of zeros and ones in such a construction can only be 256 (this is exactly the amount of information that can be encoded in one byte). By the way, converting a number from binary to decimal is quite simple. You just need to add up all the powers of two in those bits where there are ones. It couldn't be simpler, could it?

See for yourself. In our example, the number 233 is encoded in one byte. How can this be understood? We simply add powers of two where there is a one (i.e. there is a signal). Then it turns out that we take one (2 to the power of zero), add eight (two to the power of 3), plus 32 (two to the fifth power), plus 64 (to the sixth power), plus 128 (two to the seventh power). The total is 233 in decimal notation. As you can see, everything is very simple.

In the above figure, I split one byte into two parts of four bits. Each of these parts is called nibble or nibble. In one nibble, using four bits, you can encode just any hexadecimal number (a number from 0 to 15, or rather to F, because the numbers following nine in the hexadecimal system are designated by letters from the beginning of the English alphabet). But this is no longer important.

How many megabits are in a megabyte?

Let's be even clearer. Very often, Internet speed is measured in kilobits, megabits and gigabits, but, for example, programs display the speed in kilobytes, megabytes... How much will it be in bytes? How to convert megabits to megabytes?. Everything is simple here and without pitfalls. If there are 8 bits in one byte, then there are 8 kilobits in one kilobyte, and 8 megabits in one megabyte. All clear? The same goes for gigabits, terabits, etc. The reverse translation is carried out by dividing by eight.

How many megabytes are in 1 gigabyte (bytes and kilobytes in megabytes)?

The answer to this question will no longer be so prosaic. The fact is that historically it happened that to designate units of measurement of information significantly larger than a byte, The wrong terms are used(or rather, not at all true). The fact is that, for example, the prefix “kilo” means multiplying by ten to the third power, i.e. 10 3 (per thousand), “mega” - multiplication by 10 6 (that is, per million), “giga” - by 10 9, “tera” - by 10 12, etc.

But this is a decimal system, you say, and bits and bytes belong to the binary system. And you will be absolutely right. And in the binary system there is different terminology and, what is especially important, different counting system- how many bytes are contained in 1 kilobyte (how many kilobytes are in 1 megabyte, how many megabytes are in 1 gigabyte and...). Everything is based not on powers of ten (as in the decimal system, which uses the prefixes kilo, mega, tera...), but on powers of two(in which other prefixes are already used: kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, etc.).

Those. in theory, to denote large units of information names should be used: kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte, etc. But for a number of reasons (habit, and these units turned out to be not very euphonious; especially in the Russian version, yobibyte sounds cool, instead of yotabyte) these correct names did not take root, and instead they began to use incorrect ones, i.e. megabyte, terabyte, yotabyte and others that, in fairness, cannot be used in the binary system.

This is where all the confusion comes from. You and I all know that “kilo” is a multiplication by 10 3 (thousand). It is logical to assume that a kilobyte is simply 1000 bytes, but this is not the case. We are told that There are 1024 bytes in 1 kilobyte. And this is true, because as I explained just above, they initially began to use the wrong terminology and continue to do so to this day.

How are kilo-, mega-, giga- and other large bytes converted into regular ones? As I already said, in powers of two.

How many bytes are in 1 kilobyte - 2 10 (two to the tenth power) or those same 1024 bytes
And how many bytes are in 1 megabyte - 2 20 (two in the twentieth) or 1048576 bytes (which is equivalent to 1024 times 1024)
How many bytes are in 1 gigabyte - 2 30 or 107374824 bytes (1024x1024x1024)
1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes, 1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes, 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes and 1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes

How to convert kilobytes into bytes, and megabytes into gigabytes and terabytes?

Full table (decimal system is also shown for comparison) Convert bytes to kilo, mega, giga and terabytes is given below:

Decimal system			Binary system
Name	Dimension	Ten at...	Name	Dimension	Deuce in...
byte	B	10 0	byte	IN	2 0
kilo byte	kB	10 3	kibi byte	KiB Kbytes	2 10
mega byte	M.B.	10 6	furniture byte	MiB MB	2 20
giga byte	G.B.	10 9	gibi byte	GiB GB	2 30
tera byte	TB	10 12	you byte	TiB TB	2 40
peta byte	P.B.	10 15	pebi byte	PiB Pbyte	2 50
exa byte	E.B.	10 18	exbi byte	EiB Ebyte	2 60
zetta byte	ZB	10 21	zebie byte	ZiB Zbyte	2 70
yotta byte	YB	10 24	Yobi byte	YiB Ybyte	2 80

Based on the table above, you can do any recalculation, but you need to keep in mind that you should compare the names from the decimal system with the formula for calculating from the binary system.

To simplify“unnecessary” data can be simply removed from the table:

Name	Dimension	Formula for converting to bytes
byte	IN	2 0
kilo byte	KB	2 10
mega byte	MB	2 20
giga byte	GB	2 30
tera byte	TB	2 40
peta byte	Pbyte	2 50
exa byte	Ebyte	2 60
zetta byte	Zbyte	2 70
yotta byte	Ybyte	2 80

Let's let's practice a little:

How many megabytes are in 1 gigabyte? That's right, 2 10 (calculated by dividing 2 30 by 2 20) or 1024 megabytes in one gigabyte.
How many kilobytes are in a megabyte? Yes, the same amount - 1024 (calculated by dividing 2 20 by 2 10).
How many kilobytes are in 1 terabyte? This is a little more complicated, because we need to divide 2 40 by 2 10, which will give us the result of 2 30 or 1073741824 kilobytes contained in one terabyte (and not a billion, as would be the case in the decimal system).
What do you need to do to convert bytes to megabytes? We look at the table: divide the available number of bytes by 2 20 (by 107374824). Those. You're not just dividing by a million as you would in decimal (essentially moving the decimal point to the left six places), but dividing by a slightly larger number, resulting in a smaller megabyte than you expected.
How many bytes are in 1 kilobyte? Obviously, there are 2 10 or 1024 bytes in one kilobyte.

I think the principle is clear to you.

Why is a terabyte hard drive 900 gigabytes in size?

However, many hard drive manufacturers exploit the confusion described above. Have you ever been surprised that if you buy, for example, a 1 terabyte disk, after installing it in your computer and formatting it, you get a little more than 900 gigabytes. Where do almost ten percent of the size of the railway declared by the manufacturer disappear?

The fact is that, for example, when measuring the amount of RAM, they always use the binary (correct) calculation system, when 1 kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes, but hard drive manufacturers went for a trick and count the sizes of their products in decimals megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. What does this mean and what benefits does it give in practice?

Well, look for yourself - one kilobyte of memory contains 1000 bytes. It seems like a nonsense difference, but with the current sizes of hard drives measured in terabytes, everything results in a loss of tens of gigabytes.

Thus, it turns out that a terabyte disk contains simply 10 12 bytes (a trillion). However, when formatting such a disk, the calculation will be carried out using the correct binary system and as a result, out of a trillion bytes we will get only 0.9094947017729282379150390625 real (not decimal) terabytes. To recalculate, you simply need to divide 10 12 by 2 40 - see the comparison table above.

That's all. With this simple trick, they sell us a product that is ten percent less useful than we expect. From a legal point of view, there is no way to dig into it, but from the ordinary point of view of the average person, we are being quite misled. True, depending on the manufacturer, the figure may vary slightly, but a terabyte will still not work out in the end.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site