A kibibyte (a contraction of kilo binary byte) is a unit of information or computer storage, abbreviated KiB (never "kiB").

1 kibibyte = 2¹⁰ bytes = 1,024 bytes

The kibibyte is closely related to the kilobyte, which can be used either as a synonym for kibibyte or to refer to 10³ bytes = 1,000 bytes (see binary prefix).

Usage of these terms is intended to help prevent the confusion common among storage media, due to the ambiguous meaning of "kilobyte". Thus the term kibibyte has evolved to refer exclusively to 1,024 bytes.

This problem of confusion of the term kilobyte simultaneously being used to refer to both 1,000 and 1,024 became more prevalent when computer hard drives grew to the gigabyte and larger size, because if one expects power of two values to refer to capacity, and manufacturers were using power of ten values, the difference could be substantial, e.g. 1 megabyte, if expressed as power of two, is 1024² or 1024*1024, or 1,048,576, while 1000*1000, of course, is 1,000,000. In the case of a "gigabyte", if one uses 1024³, the size of a drive would be expected to be 1,073,741,824 bytes per gigabyte versus 1000³, or a mere 1,000,000,000. On a 100 gigabyte drive, the difference is a whopping 7 gigabytes additional storage that is, or is not, present depending on whether 100 gigabytes refers to 100*1000³ or 100*1024³.

See also

• Kilobyte
• Kilobuck - Equivalent term used for $1,000, another example of where the prefix "kilo" has a different meaning
• Kibibit
• Binary prefix
• SI prefix
• Orders of magnitude (data)

Units of information

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