Megabytes (MB) or Mebibytes (MiB)?

An anonymous reader says: "KernelTrap has an interesting story about megabytes versus mebibytes. Though the article refers to Linux, the topic is applicable to all computers. Will there be a time when all computer users will talk about adding mibibytes of RAM, rather than a megabytes? From the article: '[the kernel patch] changes references from the familiar MB (megabyte) and GB (gigabyte) to the NIST standard MiB (mebibyte) and GiB (gibibyte). According to these standards, technically a megabyte (MB) is a power of ten, while a mebibyte (MiB) is a power of two, appropriate for binary machines. A megabyte is then 1,000,000 bytes. A mebibyte is the actual 1,048,576 bytes that most intend.'"

Comments

Metric Revolution

[euroderf]

Kilobytes and Megabytes may have seemed like a decent measure back in the 70's, when it was important to quantize easily down to the byte level and all the users were computer scientists anyway, but these days it is rather archaic.

Most users don't know how many bytes are in a megabyte or a kilobyte, or think (naturally) 1000 rather than 1024.

However, hard drive manufacturers already use Megabyte to specifically mean 1,000,000 bytes, Before long computer OS's and RAM manufacturers will use the same definition.

Why come up with a new 'Mebibyte' system? What does 'kilo-' and 'mega-' actually mean? Answer: 1000 and 1,000,000, not the perversion of the computer scientists.

Now that computers are becoming more popular, the meaning of the terms megabyte and kilobyte are shifting back to compatibility with normal English usage.

There is no need for new terms at all, IMHO.

Words are the basis for knowledge

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Saying that it's "just" a word is horribly wrong. Language, built by words, is how we communicate information. That's a pretty important task, no matter what your personal philosophy is!

Personally I think this is a very important clarification. It'll help both CS major-type people, and consumers who ned to know what they're buying.