Operating System IX

Mebibyte (MiB) vs Megabyte (MB) and same for all the other units (Kibibyte/Kilobyte, GIbibyte, Gigabyte, so on.).

This has been a good topic to debate for the programmers since the advent of these new units, and another one goes here.

1. What is Megabyte?

This is quite a common sense question and most people know the answer to this because this (unit system) is the most widely accepted unit system. In fact, many people do not really know what the 'Megabyte' actually is.

To make things clear and easier to understand, let's think of Kilobyte.

One kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes.
(some might have thought 1000 bytes, but it is actually 1024 bytes.)

All the problems start here. 1 kilometre = 1000 metre, 1 kilohertz = 1000 hertz, 1 kilowatt = 1000 watts.

Why is 1 kilobyte not 1000 bytes?

Actually, in common sense, 1 KB must be 1000 bytes because it is 'kilo' which is the base 10.

Some clever or serious people thought about this and created a new unit system (**bi, ex: kibi, mebi, gibi) with the base 2.

This is the kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, and so on.

1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes
1 kibibyte = 1024 bytes

Now, you get what it actually means.

You must agree with this idea if you are logically minded and love to be logical and consistent.

In fact, even if most people agree with this idea, some refuse to follow this because it makes a confusion.

Well, it is true that this different unit system makes a confusion for many people who do not know a lot about the computer systems and I agree with that.

There are quite a lot of people who are even confused with Kilobyte, Megabyte, and Gigabyte and sometimes write the wrong unit for an obvious value for the computer geeks. And if we add the kibibyte, mebibyte, and gibibyte, they will be super-confused.

I totally understand what they mean and agree with what they are saying. People will not just be able to understand them. However, the point is that it is not important for them to understand what it actually means. Of course, if they really want to know about this, they can read some articles and research about it. But, many people are not really interested in that and they just want to know what value the units have.

Since, bibyte units are a replacement for the old base 10 units, people who are confused can simply replace the bi with the old unit and they can easily understand them if they understood the old unit systems.

As you can see, the confusion is not a big deal for them and can easily be prevented by simply replacing the new units with the old units in their mind.

Now, some critics might want to say "then, what's the point of changing the units? since they just replace them in their thoughts, isn't that unnecessary?".

The whole point is about 'being logical and consistent'. We created this unit system because the old unit system was inconsistent (as you could see from the examples I provided above.). People need to be consistent to do things right and more accurate. Without a consistency, a 'logic' does not exist and this is especially critical to the computer people.

Since we are all logical persons and prefer the consistency rather than illogical dirtiness, it is worth to replace the old units with the new units.

Therefore, my opinion is to use the new units. I will also standardise the new units in the OSIX project and this will be used in the documents and the data magnitude calculation parts.