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Kilobyte (KB) ○◂｜Definition｜1st｜20251119205401-00-⌔

Kilobyte - Wikipedia

Kilobyte

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The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information.

The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix kilo as a multiplication factor of 1000 (10${}^3$); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.¹ The internationally recommended unit symbol for the kilobyte is kB.¹

In some areas of information technology, particularly in reference to random-access memory capacity, kilobyte instead often refers to 1024 (2${}^{10}$) bytes. This arises from the prevalence of sizes that are powers of two in modern digital memory architectures, coupled with the coincidence that 2${}^{10}$ differs from 10${}^3$ by less than 2.5%.

The kibibyte is defined as 1024 bytes, avoiding the ambiguity issues of the kilobyte.¹

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. International Standard IEC 80000-13 Quantities and Units – Part 13: Information science and technology, International Electrotechnical Commission (2008). ↩ ↩² ↩³

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