A byte consists of how many bits?

A byte consists of how many bits?

• A. 16 bits
• B. 4 bits
• C. 32 bits
• D. 8 bits

Answer: (D)

A byte is eight bits. Each bit can be 0 or 1, so eight bits give 2^8, or 256, different patterns—enough to represent a single character in common text encodings like ASCII. That eight-bit size is the standard for a byte in modern computing, with other options representing different amounts of data: 16 bits would be two bytes, 4 bits is half a byte, and 32 bits is four bytes.

A byte is eight bits. Each bit can be 0 or 1, so eight bits give 2^8, or 256, different patterns—enough to represent a single character in common text encodings like ASCII. That eight-bit size is the standard for a byte in modern computing, with other options representing different amounts of data: 16 bits would be two bytes, 4 bits is half a byte, and 32 bits is four bytes.