A sequence of 8 bits is referred to as what?

A sequence of 8 bits is referred to as a Byte. This terminology is widely used in computer science and programming. A byte serves as a basic unit of data in computer systems, capable of representing a wide range of values due to its 256 possible combinations (from 00000000 to 11111111 in binary). This makes it sufficient for encoding a single character in many character encoding schemes, such as ASCII.

The other terms mentioned represent different sizes of data. A nibble is made up of 4 bits, which is half of a byte. A word usually refers to the standard size of data that a processor can handle at one time, which varies by architecture but is often larger than a byte. A bitstream refers to a continuous flow of bits and does not necessarily denote a fixed size of data like a byte does. Thus, the designation of 8 bits as a byte is both standard and vital in the context of data representation in computers.