words or bits?

Question

In the first computers they refere to the ROM and RAM capacity as e.g. 36K words what does that mean? shouldn't it be 36K bites?

Answer 1

No.

The definition varies somewhat depending on the CPU. For an 8-bit CPU, a "word" is 8-bits, or a byte. For 16-bit CPU, a 'word' is 2 bytes. And so on and so forth.

However, since PC's were so popular and most people grew up on programming IBM PC's 8088, they actually think that "word" actually means 16-bits.

So now you know: 36K words depends on how many bits the CPU can naturally handle.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/w/word2.html

Answer 2

The word is usually 2 or 4 bytes depending on the architecture ... and 1 byte = 8 bits, and a nibble = 4 bits ... just for knowledge :D

Answer 3

Word is a technical pseudonym for 2 bytes or 16 bits.

In computer lingo, at times data is referred to as words rather then bytes. As word is just another 'name', its as good as bytes or bits.
In network terminology 1MB might actually mean 1 MegaBITS rather then 1Mega Bytes what we are more accustomed to.

Answer 4

A byte is 8 bits, also called a word.