3 ms·
>4 bits to your byte Did that used to be called a 'nibble' or am I making that up?
by JonnieCache 16y ago
>4 bits to your byte
Did that used to be called a 'nibble' or am I making that up?
- sp332 16y agohttps://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Byte#History https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Byte#History Time was, a byte could be anywhere from 4 to 12 bits, depending on the architecture. A "nybble" is half a "byte".
- CountHackulus 16y ago7 bit bytes were an interesting time. Thank god the System 360 came around and decided to start standardizing things.
- JonnieCache 16y agoI wonder how long it will be before I'm going around saying "In my day, our bits could only be in one of two states!" Maybe my kids say things like "We had to wait until our methods had been called before we calculated our return values! We couldn't rely on Just-In-Time-Reverse-Causality-Compilation to optimize our code! Get off my hyperlawn!"
- lutorm 16y agoIsn't a bit (BInary digiT) by definition in one of two states? Otherwise it would be a "tet" or a "quat"... ;-)
- JonnieCache 16y agoI was actually referring to the qubits of quantum computers, which can be zero, one, or in a superposition of both zero and one. Or something.