Kibibit

A kibibit (a contraction of kilo binary digit) is a unit of information or computer storage, abbreviated Kibit, or sometimes Kib. (Note that the abbreviation is capitalized, while kbit is not.)

: 1 kibibit = 2¹⁰ bits = 1,024 bits: 1 kibibit = 2⁷ bytes = 128 bytes

The kibibit is closely related to the kilobit, which can either be a synonym for kibibit, or refer to 10³ bits = 1,000 bits, depending on context.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology of U.S.A. notes that "it is important to recognize that the new prefixes for binary multiples are not part of the International System of Units (SI), the modern metric system." It should also be noted that they are not in general use among professional software and electrical engineers, who generally use decimal prefixes when referring to binary quantities.

See also

* Bit
* Kilobit
* Kibibyte
* Kibibit per second
* Binary prefix
* SI prefix
* Orders of magnitude (data)

External links

* [http://xkcd.com/394/ Humorous take on this issue]