You will find more on these prefixes for binary multiples* in
past issues of Metric Today
IEEE Std 1541-2002
IEEE/ASTM SI 10-2002
SI Brochure (sidebar, page 121, to clause 3.1)
* The multiples are binary, not the prefixes.
John Steele is entirely correct. There is no ambiguity, except that
caused by misuse.
Jim
On 2010-10-14 0801, Patrick Moore wrote:
Copied out of Wikipedia
article<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_network_throughput>. I am sure
this is no news to most of you. I am intrigued at how a binary technology emulates SI
but with a unique assortment of prefixes.
Kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, and pebi prefixes
Main article: binary prefix<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix>
Kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, pebi, and exbi are binary prefix multipliers that, in 1998,
were approved as a standard by the International Electrotechnical
Commission<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Electrotechnical_Commission>
(IEC) in an effort to eliminate the confusion that sometimes occurs between decimal
(power-of-10) and binary (power-of-2) numeration terms.
At present, the prefix multipliers kilo- (k or K), mega- (M), giga- (G), tera-
(T), peta- (P), and exa- (E) are ambiguous. In most of the physical sciences,
and when describing quantities of objects generally, these multipliers refer to
powers of 10. However, when used to define data quantity in terms of bytes,
they refer to powers of 2. The following table denotes the most often-used
prefixes and their meanings.
[A table follows that is difficult to display in e-mail.]
--
James R. Frysinger
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