In most other contexts, the industry uses the multipliers kilo, mega, giga, etc., in a manner consistent with their meaning in the International System of Units (SI), namely as powers of 1000. As this is a power of 1024, and 1024 is a power of two (2 10), this usage is referred to as a binary measurement. In citations of main memory ( RAM) capacity, gigabyte customarily means 1 073 741 824 bytes. The computer industry has historically used the units kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte, and the corresponding symbols KB, MB, and GB, in at least two slightly different measurement systems.
A binary prefix is a unit prefix for multiples of units in data processing, data transmission, and digital information, notably the bit and the byte, to indicate multiplication by a power of 2.
