If a gigabyte is 10^9 bytes, then why do common technologies use numbers like 32, 64, 128, 256 gigabytes instead of something like 100, 200, 500 to easily file into 10s?

Question

What is the purpose of these seemingly arbitrary multiples of 2

In: Technology

Answer 1

You guys are worried about semantics but haven’t answered the question. It boils down to this. In computers, things get faster or more powerful by doubling. First you start with a computer that can handle one bit of information. A single 1 or zero. Well that can’t do much. So then we double it. Now it’s 2 bits. Still not much information, but now we can do some shit. Ok, put two of those together now we got 4 bits, 8,16,32,64(sounds like video game consoles doesn’t it?) until it gets up to kilobits, mega bits, gigabyte, tera etc. But really a kilobit(kilobyte) isn’t 1000 bits. It’s 1024. Because everything doubles. So then a 2kb chip is really 2048 bits. They just round it off at large multiples. Why they do it like that and don’t just make a 1000 bit chip? I dunno I guess it’s just easier to put 2 things you have together than it is to make a new one. Anyway, this applies to almost everything on computers. Hard drives, RAM, CPU chips, video boards etc.