Computer Science
Kilobyte
A kilobyte is a unit of digital information that is equal to 1,024 bytes. It is commonly used to measure the size of computer files and storage capacity. Kilobytes are often abbreviated as "KB".
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
7 Key excerpts on "Kilobyte"
eBook - PDFThe Silicon Web
Physics for the Internet Age
- Michael G. Raymer(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
2.8.1 Bits, Bytes, and Other Units The basic unit of information is the bit. One byte is defined as 8 bits and is abbrevi-ated as B. For example, you might ask a salesperson how much memory a particular memory device has, and the response might be “1,000 bytes.” This is the same as 8,000 bits. When the number of bits is much larger, we use other units—the Kilobyte (kB), megabyte (MB), gigabyte (GB), and terabyte (TB). Recall that according to the standard metric system definitions, 1 the prefix k means 10 3 , M means 10 6 , G means 10 9 , and T means 10 12 . In common computer science usage, however, these symbols are often “misused” to mean 2 10 , 2 20 , 2 30 , and 2 40 , respectively. This usage arose out of the desire to have slang names for these quantities, and because of the near correspondence between the values: 10 3 = 1,000 whereas 2 10 = 1024; 10 6 = 1,000,000 whereas 2 20 = 1,048,576; 10 9 = 1,000,000,000 whereas 2 30 = 1,073,741,824; etc. Throughout this text, we will use the standard base-ten definitions of k, M, G, and T, except where otherwise noted. For example, when we write GB, we mean 10 9 B or 10 9 bytes. THINK AGAIN Given a hard drive that can store 40,000,000,000 bytes, some computer sell-ers might state that it can store 40 GB, whereas another seller using a differ-ent definition for G might state that the same hard drive stores 37.25 GB. THINK AGAIN The word bit is used here in two different ways. Bit can mean a binary digit, 0 or 1. Bit can also mean the basic unit of information. 1 The international standards for the physical sciences and for commerce are set by the International System of Units, abbreviated SI units from the French name Système International d’Unités. Although this system does not mention bits and bytes, it is clear on the meanings of the prefixes k, M, G, and T. Because of the potential confu-sion, a set of new binary prefixes for bits and bytes was introduced in 1998 by the International Electrochemical Commission (IEC).
eBook - ePub- Lisa A. Seidman(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
is 8 bits. One byte is the amount of memory required to store one character. There are Kilobytes (about 1000 bytes), megabytes (about 1 million bytes), gigabytes (about one billion bytes), and terabytes (about one trillion bytes). One Kilobyte is roughly equivalent to one page of double-spaced text.- ■ 1 Byte = 8 bits = one character
- ■ 1 Kilobyte = 1 KB = about 1,000 bytes = 103 bytes = one thousand bytes
- ■ 1 Megabyte = 1 MB = about 1,000,000 bytes = 106 bytes = one million bytes
- ■ 1 Gigabyte = 1 GB = about 1,000,000,000 bytes = 109 bytes = one billion bytes
- ■ 1 Terabyte = 1 TB = about 1,000,000,000,000 bytes = 1012 bytes = one trillion bytes
Practice Problems-
- 1 TB = ______ GB = ______ MB = ________ KB
- 10 GB = ______ MB
- 100 KB = ______ MB
- If your digital photos on the average require 20 MB:
- How many will fit on a 64 GB memory card?
- How many will fit on a 1 TB memory card?
- Suppose as lab manager you need to back up the laboratory’s data on an external hard drive. Each researcher in the laboratory wants at least 500 GB. There are seven researchers in the laboratory.
- What is the minimum size hard drive that will be sufficient at the moment?
- What is the maximum size external hard drive or other memory device that is available at the time you are reading this text?
eBook - PDF- Kyla McMullen, Elizabeth Matthews, June Jamrich Parsons, , Kyla McMullen, Kyla McMullen, Elizabeth Matthews, June Jamrich Parsons(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Such large numbers are often expressed using terms such as megabits and gigabytes. The tricky thing about these numbers is that they commonly use binary measurements based on powers of 2, not powers of 10. For example, in the world of computers, a kilo is 2 10 , which is 1,024. But in everyday life, a kilo is just 1,000 because it is derived from the decimal value 10 3 . You can see the difference in Figure 26-5. Figure 26-5 Measurements that relate to computers are based on powers of 2 Everyday life Kilo = 1,000 = 10 3 $65K = $65,000 Salary offer Computer world Kilo = 1,024 = 2 10 65K = 65,536 Memory capacity Rashad Ashur/Shutterstock.com Lordy18838/Shutterstock.com Q Suppose your Visa chip card has 2K memory capacity. How many bytes of data can your card store? A 2K is 1,024 3 2, which equals 2,048 bytes. Figure 26-6 lists commonly used prefixes and abbreviations for binary measurements of bits and bytes. Figure 26-6 Binary measurements for bits and bytes Prefix Abbreviation for bits Abbreviation for bytes Number of bits or bytes Kilo Kb KB 2 1 024 10 5 , Mega Mb MB 2 1 048 576 20 5 , , Giga Gb GB 2 1 073 741 824 30 5 , , , Tera Tb TB 2 1 099 511 627 776 40 5 , , , , Peta Pb PB 2 1125 899 906 842 624 50 5 , , , , , Exa Eb EB 2 1152 921 504 606 846 976 60 5 , , , , , , Zetta Zb ZB 2 1180 591 620 717 411 303 424 70 5 , , , , , , , Yotta Yb YB 2 1 208 925 819 614 629 174 706 176 80 5 , , , , , , , , Copyright 2022 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
eBook - PDFComputer Practice N4 SB
TVET FIRST
- S Sasti, D Sasti(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Macmillan(Publisher)
18 Topic 1: Computing concepts and application skills TVET FIRST The size of the memory is measured by the amount of data it can store. The following table provides data measurement terms. Table 1.2: Data measurement Bit = single binary digit (1 or 0) Byte = 8 bits Kilobyte (KB) = 1 024 bytes Megabyte (MB) = 1 024 Kilobytes Gigabyte (GB) = 1 024 megabytes Terabyte (TB) = 1 024 gigabytes Petabyte (PB) = 1 024 terabytes Exabyte (EB) = 1 024 petabytes 1.2.6 Storage hardware Storage hardware is the permanent place for storing data on the computer. This is where you store files such as text, photos, videos, music and software. There are two categories of storage hardware – internal and external. • Internal storage consists of the hard disk drive (HDD) and solid state drive (SSD). • External storage is where you store data outside of the computer. Examples of external storage are external hard drives, flash memory sticks, secure digital (SD) memory cards, CDs/DVDs and magnetic tapes. Internal storage Hard disk drive (HDD) Solid state drive (SSD) Figure 1.40: HDD Figure 1.41: SSDs The HDD is made up of sensitive movable parts that can be damaged easily if used improperly. It is used to store software and all types of data. SSD is a type of internal storage that does not have any movable parts. Its storage process is similar to flash memory. It is also used to store software and all types of data. Size: 512 GB to 16 TB Size: 32 GB to 16 TB network attached storage (NAS) drive: an external HDD that is connected to the network to allow users to store and share files over the network 19 TVET FIRST Module 1: ICT systems and basic PC skills External storage External hard drive Flash memory stick Figure 1.42: External hard drive Figure 1.43: Flash memory sticks An external hard drive is a hard drive that can be attached to the computer externally in order to store data. Some external HDDs can be used as a network attached storage (NAS) drive.
- Parsons/Oja/Beskeen/Cram/Duffy, June Jamrich Parsons, David Beskeen, Carol Cram, Jennifer Duffy(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
In order for a com-puter to understand a sound, it must digitize the informa -tion that makes up the sound. Sound, such as music and speech, is characterized by the properties of a sound wave. An analog sound wave is digitized by sampling it at various points, and then converting those points into digital numbers. The more samples your computer takes, the closer the points come to approximating the full wave pattern. This process of sampling, as shown in FIGURE 4-18 , is how digital recordings, such as the music files on your portable media player, are made. As discussed, a bit is one binary digit, and a byte is eight bits. The word bit can be abbreviated as a lowercase b, and the word byte can be abbreviated as an uppercase B. The terms used to quantify computer data are summarized in TABLE 4-4 . The prefixes kilo-(thousands), mega-(millions), giga-(billions), tera-(trillion), peta- (thousand trillion), exa-(quintillion), and zetta-(sextillion) are used for large amounts of data. Bits and bytes are used in different ways. Data transmission speeds are usually expressed in bits, whereas storage space is usually expressed in bytes. T ypically, Kilobytes (KB) are used to T T refer to most common documents, megabytes (MB) are used to refer to RAM, and gigabytes (GB) are used to refer to hard drive, optical storage media, and solid-state drive capacities. In a smartphone ad, you might notice that it can store up to 64 GB. The Internet data transfer speed for your computer might be listed as 50/50 Mbps to 500/500 Mbps or megabits per second. More about bits and bytes FIGURE 4-18: Digitizing sound To digitize a wave, it is sliced into vertical segments, called samples. For purposes of illustration, this one-second sound wave was sliced into 30 samples. An analog sound wave is a smooth curve of continuous values. FIGURE 4-17: Pixels in an image Each pixel is assigned a binary number based on its color.
eBook - PDFSome Assembly Required
Assembly Language Programming with the AVR Microcontroller
- Timothy S Margush(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
The meanings of these terms, espe-cially word, doubleword, and quadword, have changed over time as the complexity (capability) of computing systems has increased, and often have different meanings in the context of different computer systems. In general, the size of a word is defined by the size of the fundamental computational unit used to process it. In a 64-bit processor world, you may use the term word when referring to a 64-bit data value. It is also common for a word to mean a 32-bit data value. The 16-bit word has its roots in the age of the 8- and 16-bit processors that were popular in the 1980s. It is also fairly consis-tent with the current usage in the world of many microcontrollers. The origin of the term byte is not clearly known, however it seems that it was originally spelled bite and represented the number of bits in a char-acter code . . . a reasonable number to manage in one “bite.” The spelling was changed at some point, presumably to avoid confusion if the trailing “e” were to be omitted. The term nybble is also a play on the word byte, indicating a small byte, specifically, half of a byte. The contents of a byte may need to be viewed as a collection of indepen-dent bits, perhaps indicating whether individual sensors attached to the system are registering as on or off. Or, the meaning of the byte may require that all 8 bits be considered as a unit, perhaps representing one of 256 dif-ferent characters. The bit pattern might represent an integer value, signed or unsigned. Or, a group of bits could represent a machine language instruction or contain address information. Since the common ingredient in all of these representations is the underlying collection of bits, for communication purposes (human to human), we need a way to represent any particular bit pattern. It is conve-nient to allow the bits to represent a number.
eBook - PDF- M Smit R Jonker(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Macmillan(Publisher)
Each character or number that makes up the source code is assigned a unique ‘bit pattern’. The computer stores all data electronically using binary digits . A bi nary digi t is known for short as a bit . A bit can be in one of two states: ‘on’ or ‘off’, equivalent to 1 and 2. One bit can only be used to represent two different values, 0 and 1. However, by grouping bits together we can store more values, for example: • 2 bits (2 2 ) can represent 4 different values: 00, 01, 10 and 11. • 3 bits (2 3 ) can represent 8 different values: 000, 001, 010, 100, 011, 101, 110 and 111, and so on. A data unit that consists of 8 bits (2 8 ) is known as a byte and it can represent 256 values. Other terms used for data units are as follows: • A nybble is equal to 4 bits. • A halfword is equal to 16 bits or 2 bytes. • A word is equal to 32 bits or 4 bytes. • A doubleword is equal to 64 bits or 8 bytes. Programming languages may specify data sizes in different terms, for example Java defines four sizes: byte = 8 bits; short = 16 bits; int = 32 bits and long = 64 bits. 82 Module 10 10.1.2 How data is stored in memory Computer memory plays an important role in saving and retrieving data. In a computer, programs and data are stored on a hard disk drive, also known as secondary memory. Whenever you access a program, the instructions that have to be executed are copied to the computer’s primary memory, also called random access memory (RAM), from where it can be accessed quickly by the CPU. Apart from hard disk drives and RAM, there are also other types of memory that can be used to store data and programs. The different methods of storing data are shown in Figure 10.1.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
