On Wed, 30 Apr 2008, Rory Browne wrote:
>> 1000 terabytes. It is commonly abbreviated PB. When used with byte
>> multiples, the prefix may indicate a power of either 1000 or 1024, so
>> the exact number may be either:
>>>> * 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes — 1000 ^ 5, or 10 ^ 15, or
>> * 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes — 1024 ^ 5, or 2 ^ 50.
Only scientists who can't count (called "computer scientists") use
that latter definition.
To avoid ambiguity, IEC introduced seperate names for the 2^(n*10)
prefixes, where typically the first two chars of the 2^(3n) prefix
are prepended to "bi", e.g. Kilo -> Kibi, etc. The n==5 prefix is
"Pebi".
See http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html.
The sooner the SI prefix abuse in the computer world dies out the
better..
regards,
--
Paul Jakma paul at clubi.iepaul at jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
She's genuinely bogus.
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