binary prefix
Power-of-two multiplier
A binary prefix is a unit prefix indicating powers of 2 rather than powers of 10.
In computing, kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, and tebi- (Ki, Mi, Gi, Ti) precisely denote 2¹⁰, 2²⁰, 2³⁰, and 2⁴⁰ respectively.
These were standardized to resolve ambiguity with metric prefixes like kilo- and mega-, which properly mean 1,000 and 1,000,000 but had been used loosely for 1,024 and 1,048,576 in digital contexts: The drive shows 500 GB but only 465 GiB because manufacturers use decimal prefixes.
- kilobyteStorage measurement unit
- megabyteData capacity measure
- gigabyteData storage unit
- terabyteTrillion-byte measure
- base twoNumeral system using 0,1
power of two · data · data storage · storage · hard drive · flash drive · memory stick · memory · computing · powers · 1024 · 1000 · bits · bytes · digital · metric · units · measurement