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Concept
Nibble
Summary
In computing, a nibble (occasionally nybble, nyble, or nybl to match the spelling of byte) is a four-bit aggregation, or half an octet. It is also known as half-byte or tetrade. In a networking or telecommunication context, the nibble is often called a semi-octet, quadbit, or quartet. A nibble has sixteen (24) possible values. A nibble can be represented by a single hexadecimal digit (–) and called a hex digit.
A full byte (octet) is represented by two hexadecimal digits (–); therefore, it is common to display a byte of information as two nibbles. Sometimes the set of all 256-byte values is represented as a 16×16 table, which gives easily readable hexadecimal codes for each value.
Four-bit computer architectures use groups of four bits as their fundamental unit. Such architectures were used in early microprocessors, pocket calculators and pocket computers. They continue to be used in some microcontrollers. In this context, 4-bit groups were sometimes also called characters rather than nibbles.
The term nibble originates from its representing "half a byte", with byte a homophone of the English word bite. In 2014, David B. Benson, a professor emeritus at Washington State University, remembered that he playfully used (and may have possibly coined) the term nibble as "half a byte" and unit of storage required to hold a binary-coded decimal (BCD) decimal digit around 1958, when talking to a programmer of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The alternative spelling nybble reflects the spelling of byte, as noted in editorials of Kilobaud and Byte in the early 1980s. Another early recorded use of the term nybble was in 1977 within the consumer-banking technology group at Citibank. It created a pre-ISO 8583 standard for transactional messages between cash machines and Citibank's data centers that used the basic informational unit 'NABBLE'.
The nibble is used to describe the amount of memory used to store a digit of a number stored in packed decimal format (BCD) within an IBM mainframe. This technique is used to make computations faster and debugging easier.
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