Binary prefix

A binary prefix is a unit prefix for multiples of units in data processing, data transmission, and digital information, notably the bit and the byte, to indicate multiplication by a power of 2. The computer industry has historically used the units kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte, and the corresponding symbols KB, MB, and GB, in at least two slightly different measurement systems. In citations of main memory (RAM) capacity, gigabyte customarily means 1073741824 bytes. As this is the third power of 1024, and 1024 is a power of two (210), this usage is referred to as a binary prefix.

Binary prefix

A binary prefix is a unit prefix for multiples of units in data processing, data transmission, and digital information, notably the bit and the byte, to indicate multiplication by a power of 2. The computer industry has historically used the units kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte, and the corresponding symbols KB, MB, and GB, in at least two slightly different measurement systems. In citations of main memory (RAM) capacity, gigabyte customarily means 1073741824 bytes. As this is the third power of 1024, and 1024 is a power of two (210), this usage is referred to as a binary prefix.