When isn't a byte 8-bits?

[cluelessgenius]

well there is the whole decimal vs. binary situation where in binary 1024 byte are a kilobyte and in decimal its exactly 1000 but other than that i cant think of any weirdness

[Sniperfox47]

28 minutes ago, cluelessgenius said:

[...] where in binary 1024 byte are a kilobyte [...]

You mean kibibyte? Kilobyte is 1000 bytes, kibibyte is 1024 bytes.

[cluelessgenius]

8 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

You mean kibibyte? Kilobyte is 1000 bytes, kibibyte is 1024 bytes.

yes thank you i had a feeling i mixed something up there. anyway decimal is 1000 and binary 1024 at least i was right about that

[Sakkura]

On 2/2/2018 at 11:29 AM, Sniperfox47 said:

You mean kibibyte? Kilobyte is 1000 bytes, kibibyte is 1024 bytes.

Binary kilobyte is the same as kibibyte, and the latter is not (yet) firmly established terminology. It's entirely normal to run across kilobyte being used to mean 1024 bytes, and so on with the larger units.

[Sniperfox47]

1 minute ago, Sakkura said:

Binary kilobyte is the same as kibibyte, and the latter is not (yet) firmly established terminology. It's entirely normal to run across kilobyte being used to mean 1024 bytes, and so on with the larger units.

Kibibyte was set as an IEC standard back in 1998. It is the standards organization term. The face that Microsoft, et Al. are ignoring the standard and aren't using it doesn't make it not the established standard.

[Sakkura]

2 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Kibibyte was set as an IEC standard back in 1998. It is the standards organization term. The face that Microsoft, et Al. are ignoring the standard and aren't using it doesn't make it not the established standard.

It's the standard, but it isn't what people or companies necessarily use. So you need to know the earlier terminology anyway.

[AngryBeaver]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but... ECC memory operates on 9 bits. This is how it confirms that the information in memory is accurate. The extra bit is only there to make sure that the numbers always come out as a positive number.

 

That way if the machine is reading back the ram and notices the total comes up negative it will know that the memory is having an issue and can then attempt to retrieve the correct information thanks to that extra bit.