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Kilo-


Kilo (from the Greek χίλιοι, literally a thousand) is a decimal unit prefix in the metric system denoting multiplication by one thousand (103). It has been used in the International System of Units where it has the unit symbol k, in lower case.

The prefix kilo is derived from the Greek word χίλιοι (chilioi), meaning "thousand". It was originally adopted by Antoine Lavoisier's research group in 1795, and introduced into the metric system in France with its establishment in 1799.

In 19th century English it was sometimes spelled chilio, in line with a puristic opinion by Thomas Young

For the kilobyte, a second definition has been in common use in some fields of computer science and information technology, which is, however, inconsistent with the SI definition. It uses kilobyte as meaning 210 bytes = 1024 bytes, because of the mathematical coincidence that 210 is approximately 103. The reason for this application is that binary values natively used in computing are base 2 values, and not decimal based. The NIST comments on this confusion: "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.

Example:

To address this confusion, a new set of binary prefixes have been introduced which are based on powers of 2. In that system, 1024 bytes are called a kibibyte or 1 KiB.

When units occur in exponentiation, such as in square and cubic forms, any multiplier prefix is considered part of the unit, and thus included in the exponentiation.


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