Editing Kilo- (section)

==kilobyte==
For the kilobyte, a second definition has been in common use in some fields of [[computer science]] and information technology. It uses ''kilobyte'' to mean 2<sup>10</sup> bytes (= 1024 bytes), because of the [[Mathematical coincidence#Concerning base 2|mathematical coincidence]] that 2<sup>10</sup> is approximately 10<sup>3</sup>. The reason for this application is that digital hardware and architectures natively use [[base 2]] exponentiation, and not [[base 10|decimal]] systems. [[JEDEC memory standards]] still permit this definition, but acknowledge the correct SI usage.

NIST comments on the confusion caused by these contrasting definitions: "Faced with this reality, the ''IEEE Standards Board'' decided that IEEE standards will use the conventional, internationally adopted, definitions of the SI prefixes", instead of kilo for 1024.<ref>[http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html Definition of binary prefixes at NIST]</ref>  To address this conflict, a new set of [[binary prefix]]es has been introduced, which is based on powers of 2. Therefore, 1024 bytes are defined as one [[kibibyte]] (1 KiB).