MBps/mbps whats the diff?

[sam375]

ok this has been increasingly annoying me. when you see an abbreviation such as "MBps" does that stand for mega-bytes per second or mega-bits per second? as i understand it the uppercase means bytes (MBps), lower case means bits (mbps). true?

[dr_hardware]

MB/s <-> MBps --> MegaBytes per second

mbps --> MegaBits per second ( / 8 => Megabytes ) [ divide 8 gives you the MB unit ]

[sam375]

wait inst it X8? there are 8 bits in a byte i think.

[dr_hardware]

1 Byte = 8 Bits
1 Kb = 8000 Bits
1 Mb = 8000000 Bits...
...
...

/ 8

[sam375]

ok what about when they say to calcutate the number of instructions a 32bit processor can do at once, you do 2^32. It comes out to just over 4billion. then people say, well that means the max amount of RAM you can have is 4GB. BUT 2^32 give you 4Gb (gigabits), so whats the heck with that?