[troub]

So my chem teacher was talking about prefixes today (first week of class - review i guess) and he said:

"For example A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes and a megabyte is 1000 kilobytes"

I wanted to correct him but I figured it would just confuse everyone.

1gb = 1024 mb

teehee typo

 

[GhostUser]

Poor guy.

We learned about prefixes in chem last week, too. It was boring.

 

[hamilton]

You mean 1024 not 1028 I believe troub.

Good observation - I've do a bunch of conversions between mb, gb, kb, etc for my day job - I have found that when I have used 1000 someone else expected 1024 and when I've used 1024, yep, shoulda used 1000.

 

[GhostUser]

Apparently...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix kilo-, meaning 1000) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to either 1024 or 1000 bytes. It is commonly abbreviated KB, kB, Kbyte, kbyte, or, very informally, K or k.

The term "kilobyte" was first used to refer to a value of 1024 bytes (210), because the binary nature of digital computers lends itself to quantities that are powers of two, and 210 is roughly one thousand. As computers became more widely used, this misuse (according to the BIPM) of the SI prefix spread from the slang of computer professionals into the mainstream lexicon, creating much confusion. See binary prefix for more details.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

These prefixes can therefore be used with either decimal (powers of 1000) or binary (powers of 1024) values, depending on context:...

1000 bytes (103): This definition is consistent with the SI prefix, and is recommended for all uses by international standards organizations such as IEC, IEEE, and ISO, with the abbreviation "kB". The overwhelming popularity of the 1024 definition means that anyone using "kilobyte" to mean 1000 in these situations is likely to cause confusion. However, it is common to use 1000 when deriving kilobyte measures from quantities which are not based on powers of two, such as bitrates.

Your prof wasn't wrong.

 

[remilard]

maybe he works for a hard drive manufacturer?

in related news, we just upgraded to 4 gigs of ram at work because of some modeling software we run (although we had used the new version for a couple of weeks on 1 gig and nobody had problems). My boss keeps saying "4 megs"

 

[troub]

4 megs of ram?

thats awesome. almost enough to play Oregon Trail.

 

[luisgarciadiaz]

when it's 1000 and not 1024 aren't you supposed to say KiB? Or is it the other way around?

 

[Kyo]

kilo=10e3 exactly

mega-10e6 exactly

giga=10e9 exactly

tera=10e12 exactly

So your chemistry teacher was correct

And if you want to be precise what is commonly called 1G of memory isn't 1 gigabytes and it also isn't 1024 megabytes. It's exactly 2 to the 30th power or 1,073,741,824 bytes