Sunday, October 16, 2005

Nibble or Nybble?




Lets said...

I have always heard that a nybble (or nibble) is half a byte. My comp. sci. instructor said it was 2 bytes however.

Lincoln-nerd said...

You're right, your instructor is WRONG.
A nybble is 4 bits, there are 2 nybbles in a byte. In the olden days of computers, two bytes were called a word.
Good Job

Roedy said...

Word is the natural size chunk a computer uses. DEC PDP had 16 bits. Univac had 36 bits, the IBM 360 had 32 bits, the Burroughs 1700 had 24 bits, the CDC 6600 had 60 bits.

The original byte was 12 bits -- a term used in very early IBM disc drives.