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How many bits make up a byte?

  1. 4 bits

  2. 6 bits

  3. 8 bits

  4. 16 bits

The correct answer is: 8 bits

A byte is a fundamental unit of digital information storage and is made up of 8 bits. This standard is widely used in computer science and digital communications, where bits represent the smallest unit of data, either a 0 or a 1. When 8 bits are grouped together, they form a byte, which can represent a wide range of values, such as a single character in text or a small number in numerical formats. The choice of 8 bits for a byte has become a convention in computing, as it strikes a balance between being compact enough for data storage while being large enough to represent a reasonable variety of information, such as characters in ASCII encoding. Each additional bit doubles the amount of data that can be represented, making 8 bits capable of representing 256 different values (from 0 to 255).