Kibibyte
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| SI prefixes | Binary prefixes | |||
| Name (Symbol) |
Standard SI |
Alternate Use |
Name (Symbol) |
Value |
| kilobyte (kB) | 103 = 10001 | 210 | kibibyte (KiB) | 210 |
| megabyte (MB) | 106 = 10002 | 220 | mebibyte (MiB) | 220 |
| gigabyte (GB) | 109 = 10003 | 230 | gibibyte (GiB) | 230 |
| terabyte (TB) | 1012 = 10004 | 240 | tebibyte (TiB) | 240 |
| petabyte (PB) | 1015 = 10005 | 250 | pebibyte (PiB) | 250 |
| exabyte (EB) | 1018 = 10006 | 260 | exbibyte (EiB) | 260 |
| zettabyte (ZB) | 1021 = 10007 | 270 | zebibyte (ZiB) | 270 |
| yottabyte (YB) | 1024 = 10008 | 280 | yobibyte (YiB) | 280 |
A kibibyte (a contraction of kilo binary byte) is a unit of information or computer storage, established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 2000 [1]. It is abbreviated KiB.
- 1 kibibyte = 210 bytes = 1,024 bytes
The kibibyte is closely related to the kilobyte, which can be used either as a synonym for kibibyte or to refer to 103 bytes = 1,000 bytes (see binary prefix).
Usage of these terms is intended to avoid the confusion, common in describing storage media, as to the ambiguous meaning of "kilobyte". Thus the term kibibyte has evolved to refer exclusively to 1,024 bytes.
This problem of confusion of the term kilobyte being used to refer to both 1,000 and 1,024 bytes became more prevalent when computer hard drives grew to the gigabyte and larger sizes, because if one expects power-of-two values to refer to capacity, and manufacturers were using power-of-ten values, the difference could be substantial; e.g., 1 megabyte, if expressed as a power of two, is 10242 or 1024×1024, or 1,048,576, while the prefix mega- usually means 1,000,000. In the case of a "gigabyte", if one uses 10243, the size of a drive would be expected to be 1,073,741,824 bytes per gigabyte versus a mere 1,000,000,000. On a 100-gigabyte drive, the difference is more than 7 billion bytes of storage, depending on whether 100 gigabytes refers to 100×10003 or 100×10243.
