why does getsizeof a float num return 16 in python

Question

>>> x=float(12.345)
>>> x
12.345
>>> sys.getsizeof(x)
16
>>> sys.getsizeof(12.345)
16

Here 16 is of the unit of byte? But in the document it's of 64 bits the float

python 3.5.1 32bits Windows 7 64

Answer 1

sys.getsizeof() returns the memory size of an instance of the float type. In addition to the 8 bytes used by the 64-bit IEEE representation of a float, additional memory is used for reference count, a pointer to type information, etc.

Answer 2

The memory space consumed by a python variable depends on the what version of python you have ie. 32 bit or 64 bit platform.

Coming to float representation. A float in 32 bit python consumes 16 bytes of memory while for 64 bit it consumes 24 byte of memory.