Itanium® Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles

1.4. Prefixes for Binary Multiples

For certain topics, especially architecture, computer science is a quantitative science. We shall introduce appropriate discussions of number systems and related matters as they are needed. The first such discussion here treats the matter of scale factors and abbreviations for “big” numbers.

Treating 2¹⁰ (1024) and 10³ (1000) as synonymous introduced a sloppy situation for nomenclature in the fields of computer science, data processing, and data transmission. People were using the prefix kilo, from the International System of Units (SI), not only for its proper meaning of precisely 1000, but also to denote the binary multiple 1024. Doing so introduces an uncertainty of 2.4% in magnitude. The uncertainty compounds ...