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1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

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Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#231

Post by jiveturkey »

ralferoo wrote: post #163
pjdesno wrote: post #79

I had a computer architecture prof (a reasonably accomplished one, too) who thought that all CS units should be binary, e.g. Gigabit Ethernet should be 931Mbit/s, not 1000MBit/s. I disagreed strongly - I think X-per-second should be decimal, to correspond to Hertz. But for quantity, binary seems better. (modern CS papers tend to use MiB, GiB etc. as abbreviations for the binary units) Fun fact - for a long time consu…

There's a good reason that gigabit ethernet is 1000MBit/s and that's because it was defined in decimal from the start. We had 1MBit/s, then 10MBit/s, then 100MBit/s then 1000MBit/s and now 10Gbit/s. Interestingly, from 10GBit/s, we now also have binary divisions, so 5GBit/s and 2.5GBit/s. Even at slower speeds, these were traditionally always decimal based - we call it 50bps, 100bps, 150bps, 300bps, 1200bps, 2400bps,…

> that's because it was defined in decimal from the start

I mean, that's not quite it. By that logic, had memory been defined in decimal from the start (happenstance), we'd have 4000 byte pages.

Now ethernet is interesting ... the data rates are defined in decimal, but almost everything else about it is octets! Starting with the preamble. But the payload is up to an annoying 1500 (decimal) octets. The _minimum_ frame length is defined for CSMA/CD to work, but the max could have been anything.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#232

Post by dietr1ch »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #198
ozozozd wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not them denying it, it’s the LLM that generated this slop. All they had to say was that the KiB et. al. were introduced in 1998, and the adoption has been slow. And not “but a kilobyte can be 1000,” as if it’s an effort issue.

They are managed by different standards organizations. One doesn't like the other encroaching on its turf. "kilo" has only one official meaning as a base-10 scalar.

I don't think of base 10 being meaningful in binary computers. Indexing 1k needs 10 bits regardless if you wanted 1000 or 1024, and the base 10 leaves some awkward holes.

In my mind base 10 only became relevant when disk drive manufacturers came up with disks with "weird" disk sizes (maybe they needed to reserve some space for internals, or it's just that the disk platters didn't like powers of two) and realised that a base 10 system gave them better looking marketing numbers. Who wants a 2.9TB drive when you can get a 3TB* drive for the same price?

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#233

Post by nixpulvis »

pif wrote: post #46
kmm wrote: post #10

And a megabyte is depending on the context precisely 1000x1000=1,000,000 or 1024x1024=1,048,576 bytes*, except when you're talking about the classic 3.5 inch floppy disks, where "1.44 MB" stands for 1440x1024 bytes, or about 1.47 true MB or 1.41 MiB. * Yeah, I read the article. Regardless of the IEC's noble attempt, in all my years of working with people and computers I've never heard anyone actually pronounce MiB (o…

> I've never heard It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish.

Exactly.

If you're talking loosely, then you can get away with it.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#234

Post by nixpulvis »

tombert wrote: post #115
pif wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never heard It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish.

All words are made up. They weren’t handed down from a deity, they were made up by humans to communicate ideas to other humans. “Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts and it’s really no more or less correct as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other.

That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language.

We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion.

SI is pretty clear for a reason.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#235

Post by HungryYeti »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #132

I automatically assume that people that use KB=1000B want to sell me something (and provide less than promised), so should be aggressively ignored or removed from vicinities KB is 1024 bytes, and don't you dare try stealing those 24 bytes from me

[dead]

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#236

Post by userbinator »

dietr1ch wrote: post #232
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are managed by different standards organizations. One doesn't like the other encroaching on its turf. "kilo" has only one official meaning as a base-10 scalar.

I don't think of base 10 being meaningful in binary computers. Indexing 1k needs 10 bits regardless if you wanted 1000 or 1024, and the base 10 leaves some awkward holes. In my mind base 10 only became relevant when disk drive manufacturers came up with disks with "weird" disk sizes (maybe they needed to reserve some space for internals, or it's just that the disk platters didn't like powers of two) and realised that…

At the TB level, the difference is closer to 10%.

Three binary terabytes i.e. 3 * 2^40 is 3298534883328, or 298534883328 more bytes than 3 decimal terabytes. The latter is 298.5 decimal gigabytes, or 278 binary gigabytes.

Indeed, early hard drives had slightly more than even the binary size --- the famous 10MB IBM disk, for example, had 10653696 bytes, which was 167936 bytes more than 10MB --- more than an entire 160KB floppy's worth of data.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#237

Post by userbinator »

kazinator wrote: post #229
f33d5173 wrote: post #210

A mile is exactly 1000 paces, or 4000 feet. You may disagree, but consider: the word mile come from latin for "one thousand". Therefore a mile must be 1000 of something, namely paces. I hope you find this argument convincing.

There is a "metric mile" which is 1500 m. This is something in the context of track and field athletics.

There is also a "metric gallon", or 4L.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#238

Post by thfuran »

dietr1ch wrote: post #232
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are managed by different standards organizations. One doesn't like the other encroaching on its turf. "kilo" has only one official meaning as a base-10 scalar.

I don't think of base 10 being meaningful in binary computers. Indexing 1k needs 10 bits regardless if you wanted 1000 or 1024, and the base 10 leaves some awkward holes. In my mind base 10 only became relevant when disk drive manufacturers came up with disks with "weird" disk sizes (maybe they needed to reserve some space for internals, or it's just that the disk platters didn't like powers of two) and realised that…

>I don't think of base 10 being meaningful in binary computers.

Okay, but what do you mean by “10”?

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#239

Post by kazinator »

crazygringo wrote: post #212
array_key_first wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means that is fine for Kilo to mean 1024 in the context of computers and 1000 in the context of distances, because you're never going to be in a situation where that is ambiguous.

Except it's not because it's constantly ambiguous in computing. E.g. Macs measure file sizes in powers of 10 and call them KB, MB, GB. Windows measures file sizes in powers of 2 and calls them KB, MB, GB instead of KiB, MiB, GiB. Advertised hard drives come in powers of 10. Advertised memory chips come in powers of 2. When you've got a large amount of data or are allocating an amount of space, are you measuring its s…

It's the forced revisionism of what "kilobyte", "megabyte" and "gigabyte", that has caused most of the confusion.

Especially that it was only partially successful.

Which is not to say that there had been zero confusion; but it was only made worse.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#240

Post by lukan »

int_19h wrote: post #148
lukan wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would be literally correct. Kilo means 1000, not 1024.

"kilo" means what people take it to mean in any particular context. In computing, it is overwhelmingly power of two even today, and if you don't use it in this manner you have to clarify to be understood properly.

Sure. I assume the ship has sailed already and I certainly won't die on that hill to change the meaning again, but still the word "kilo" literally means 1000 and it would have been more consistent to use it like this and for 1024 use a (slightly) different word.
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