Storage units KB KiB ... What!

What am I on about?

The term Kilobyte has been around forever. I was taught it at school and many many others have used this term for a very long time. It has "changed".

• We determine a kilobyte as 1024 bytes
• A byte as 8 bits

And therefore going to our larger sizes

• 1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes
• 1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes

So today I was told about the kibibyte or KiB. This is the new denomination for 1024 bytes which was originally created in 1999 ( International Electrotechnical Commission (January 1999), IEC 60027-2 Amendment 2: Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology - Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics )

In 2008, the IEC created a standardisation for it... This is:

IEC 80000-13:2008

So

What is a kibibyte etc now!

A Kibibyte is now 1024 bytes

A Kilobyte is now 1000 bytes

A Mebibyte is 1024 Kibibytes

A Megabyte is 1000 Kilobytes

A Gibibyte is 1024 Mebibytes

A Gigabyte is 1000 Megabytes

Lets do a big change now

Mebibyte to Kilobyte = ‪1048.576‬

Gibibyte to Megabyte = ‪1048.576‬

Weird if you ask me...

Why change it?

Who knows. As far as I am concerned, almost all storage mediums still use the archaic terms so I am sticking with them