Send us your feedback . However, the terms kilobyte and megabyte , for example, only approximate actual data capacity. Blame the binary code, says Geneva-based IEC, which writes global standards for electronic technologies.
Electronic information is written in the ones and zeros of the code's two-digit format.
The metric system, of course, is based on 10 digits. By definition, a kilobyte isn't 1000 bytes, but 1024 bytes, while a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. However, programmers at the dawn of the Information Age used the closest metric prefixes available to them. With the help of NIST, IEC adopted new prefixes that it believes are more accurate. The new terms represent exponentially increasing binary multiples.