Industrial Engineer · phase 4 of 16 · noun
Byte / SINT
Eight-bit data quantity, interpreted as bits or as a small integer according to its data type.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- A byte is eight bits handled as a group. As a SINT it is a small signed integer from minus 128 to 127, and as a byte it is eight flags side by side.
- Example
- A drive status byte carries eight bits, ready, running, faulted, at speed and so on, in one value. The program reads the whole byte from the network and picks bits out of it.
- Why it matters
- Bytes are how compact devices talk, so reading network data usually means unpacking them. Treating a bit mapped byte as a number gives you a value like 37 that means nothing until you look at its bits.
- Hook
- Eight switches in one pocket.
Word knowledge
How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.
In a sentence
The PLC copies the Byte from the input module into a status tag before testing individual alarm flags.
How it is built
- byte coinage altered spelling of bite, chosen to prevent confusion with bit
Where it came from
- Origin
- English computing coinage by Werner Buchholz at IBM, formed from bite with y replacing i
- Entered the language
- 1956
- What changed
- Initially used for a machine-sized group of bits in IBM computer design, the term later acquired a standardized size.
How it is spelled
- Pattern
- The final silent e supports the long i sound represented by y.
- Breaks the pattern
- The spelling deliberately changes the expected form bite to byte.
Spelled like
- type
- hype
- style
Broken into chunks
-
byte
- kilobyte
- megabyte
- bytecode
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 4: PLC Memory, Tags, and Instructions
The data a program moves and the instructions that move it, from a single true or false value up to a structured array.
