Byte codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers optimize for this common usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the eight-bit size. Modern architectures typically use 32- or 64-bit words, built of four or eight bytes. The unit symbol for the byte was designated as the upper-case letter "B" by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in contrast to the bit, whose IEEE symbol is a lower-case "b". Internationally, the unit "octet", symbol "o",
Byte (magazine) not "how to do it". The editorial focus remained on home and personal computers). By the early 1980s "Byte" had become an "elite" magazine, seen as a peer of "Rolling Stone" and "Playboy", and others such as David Bunnell of "PC Magazine" aspired to emulate its reputation and success. It was the only computer publication on the 1981 Folio 400 list of largest magazines. "Byte"s 1982 average number of pages was 543, and the number of paid advertising pages grew by more than 1,000 while most magazines' amount of advertising did not change. Its circulation of 420,000 was the third