memory reported less than installed

[NoOp]

On 08/12/2008 11:05 AM, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
> 2008/8/11 NoOp <snip>
[snip]
>>
>> Regarding memory manufacturer's, this is interesting:
>> http://www.edgetechcorp.com/support/technical-glossary.asp
>> <quote>
>> MEGABIT
>> Amount of memory equal to 1,048,576 bytes of data.(abbreviated MB)
>>
>> Megabyte
>> A megabyte is composed of 1024 kilobytes or 1,048,576 bytes. Megabyte is
>> commonly abbreviated using 'M' or 'Mb'. NOTE: In many cases, an megabyte
>> is incorrectly stated as being 1 million bytes.
> 
> 
> No, that's not incorrect.
> 1 MB=1000000 bytes
> 1 MiB=1048576 bytes
> This is called IEEE
> 1541<http://freedos-32.sourceforge.net/showdoc.php?page=standards#ieee1541>
> .

That was my point... and why I pointed to the NIST references which is a
much more authoritative source. See:
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/bibliography.html
NIST is the US National Institute of Standards and Technology
(http://nist.gov/) and in their bibliography they point to Le Système
International d'Unites (SI)
However I was wrong with regard to the semiconductor industry (see JEDEC
info below).

The IEC has a nice writeup here & demonstrates the differential problem
as the number of bytes increases. http://www.iec.ch/zone/si/si_bytes.htm

That said, Rashkae is correct in that the semiconductor industry
continues to use the binary metric. The JEDEC has, for legal reasons,
place a 'clarifier' in their standard - from JEDEC Standard No. 100B.01
(http://www.jedec.org/download/search/JESD100B01.pdf):

<quote - modified for ASCII to show ^ for powers>
giga (G) (as a prefix to units of semiconductor storage capacity): A
multiplier equal to 1 073 741 824 (2^30 or K^3, where K = 1024).

NOTE 1 Contrast with the SI prefix giga (G) equal to 10^9, as in a
1-Gb/s data transfer rate, which is equal to 1 000
000 000 bits per second.
</quote>

The mega (M) section contains further clarification regarding the
semiconductor useage and the SI prefix.

So given the JEDEC standard, I wonder if the changes from 'MB or GB'
(Gutsy) to  'MiB or GiB' to reflect _memory_ in the Hardy System Monitor
is correct. As you said, it certainly would be so much easier if
everyone followed a single published standard. :-)