About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

23 Austl. L. Libr. 33 (2015)
A Bit of Bytes: The Anatomy of Size and Memory

handle is hein.journals/auslwlib23 and id is 37 raw text is: 






A Bit of Bytes: The Anatomy of Size and Memory

Alex Cato, Ashurst Australia


Everything is shrinking. More and more, our
computers are resembling tablets and the smart-
phone has morphed away from Bell's dream 'Cos
hey, who calls any more?!'

So far my columns have focused on the online
or mobile/smart devices. For a change I am
going back to the hardware basics. This month's
column is about the size and memory capacity of
your computer. It's a mash up of:

*  what those computer specifications and figures
   actually mean;
*  what all these figures mean in today's technol-
   ogy; and
*  what the basic anatomy of your computer's
   memory is.

If you are an expert on computer hardware or
were forced to become an expert recently when
you had to buy a new computer, this month's
column may not be for you. But for everyone
else who just smiles and nods when someone says
cache ... it's time to go down the rabbit hole, so
please read on.

To start with, a bit about bytes. Most of you will
know that a GB is bigger than a MB and a MB
is bigger than a KB but here's what they actually
mean.

There are eight bits in a byte (B). The smallest unit
of memory, the Bit. In the computer world the Bit


is an atom.The smallest unit of measurement it's
either a '0' or a '1'. What does a byte make?

There are 1,024 B in a kilobyte (KB). These days
a KB doesn't make much. A five page paper (no
pictures) is approximately 100 KB. If you cast
back to 1981, the KB was a bigger deal. In 1981
the first remotely affordable home computer had
a capacity of 16 kilobytes. If you splurged you
could bump it up to 256 KB.

There are 1,048,576 bytes or 1,024 KB in a
Megabyte (MB), which is just under 1000 pages of
plain text.'There are 1,048,576 KB or 1,024 MB in
a gigabyte (GB). Now: two GB is the approximate
size of a high quality legally downloaded 90 minute
movie or approximately 341 digital pictures.2

And finally, there are 1,048,576 megabytes or
1,024 gigabytes in a terabyte (TB).

A terabyte is 233 DVD's, bonus features and all,
or Peter Jackson's entire directing career line up.
There's also the crazy sizes, a petabyte, exabyte,
zettabyte and yottabyte.

and now for a curve ball...

What's the size of the Internet?

With approximately three billion users3 it's hard to
put a number on it. Back in 2010, Google said it
had indexed 200 TB of data which was estimated
to be about 0.004% of the Internet.4 It's hard to
put a number on it but it is big. Really, really big.


    Tech Target http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/cache-memory
    The difference between RAM and Cache - http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-ram-and-vs-
    cache-memory/.
2   http://www.Internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.
3   http://www.websitemagazine.com/images/blog/adayofthelnternet-info.png.
4   http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chspace.htm.

AuSTRALIAN IAx, LIBRARIAN. Vol. 23 No. 1 2015.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most