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Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes
(zeta.one)
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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It's not as simple as that. A lot of "computer things" are not exact powers of two. A prominent example would be HDDs.
In terms of storage 1000 and 1024 take the same amount of ~~bytes~~ bits to represent. So from a computer point of view 1024 makes a lot more sense.
It's just a binary Vs decimal thing. 1000 is not nicely represented in binary the same as 1024 isn't in decimal.
Edit: was talking about storing the actual number.
What? No. A terabyte in 1024 units is 8,796,093,022,208 bits. In 1000 units it's 8,000,000,000,000 bits.
The difference is substantial with larger numbers.
Both require the same amount of bits again. So the second one makes more sense for a computer.