Concept in Definition ABC

Structure of binary code. Every eight digits equals one byte. It would be nearly impossible to graphically represent a kilobyte in an image.

The word kilobyte is one of those that we normally confuse with other similar terms and that "turn" our heads. Taking into account that one byte of information is equivalent to one letter, one kilobyte would equal one thousand letters or characters. Let's give an example, the letter A (a capital letter) is interpreted by a computer as "01000001". Each readable letter in this article corresponds to various combinations of 1's and 0's called bytes. The term byte comes from the old computers and it was said that 8 combinations of 1 and 0 was the maximum that could bite (byte) a processor. So a Kilobyte is 1000 bytes or 1000 letters. It is common to hear that it is equivalent to 1024 but that is only a expression approximate that they used at the beginning of the computing. A Kilobyte is 1000 bytes but it was said that 2 (referring to binary code) raised to the power of 10 equals 1024.

Let's check it: (2x2 = 4x2 = 8x2 = 16x2 = 32x2 = 64x2 = 128x2 = 256x2 = 512x2 = 1024). We can see that we have used the two 10 times bone 2 raised to the power of 10.

Old narrowband or base modem that worked with a velocity download of 56 kilobytes per second.

This 1024 is only expressed when talking about storageeg hard drives, CDs, DVDs, USB flash drives, etc. To speak of data transmission speed is to return to the logic, where a Kilobyte is a thousand characters or words. To avoid this typical confusion, the International Electrotechnical Commission created the kibibyte, this is how the expression in power of 2 to the power of ten is designated.

So when we talk about kibibytes or "KiB" for short, we are talking about storage since all storage devices express their capacity in 2 to the power of 10. In this way it is understood that when we buy a HDD of for example 120 Gigs these correspond to less real capacity (only 111 gb. approx.) of that expressed by this power system. Our explorer does not enter into approximations but it counts the real capacity of the storage device.

Today the expression kilobyte is no longer used, mainly due to the large capacity of storage devices that are measured in megabytes and even Terabytes. Likewise, downlink broadband communications are no longer measured in KB / s, but are measured in megabytes. Only in areas where the connection is made by narrow band (or basic) telephone line can it be measured in a simple 56 Kilobytes per second of download. Older modems had that lowering speed.