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A certain computer can be equipped with 1,073,741,824 bytes of memory. Why would

a manufacturer choose such a peculiar number, instead of an easy-to-remember number

like 1,000,000,000?

1 Answer

3 votes

Answer: Please see below as the answer is self-explanatory.

Step-by-step explanation:

The number used is an exact power of 2, 2³⁰.

The importance of this fact resides in that all modern computers use binary arithmetic, so it is a lot easier to do calculations, if the memory positions available add to an exact power of two.

This is the reason why manufacturers offer RAM modules in multiples of 2, like 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384,etc.

Anyway, in order to not confuse to users, they are advertised like 4 GB, 8 GB, etc. which are figures easier to remember to us humans.

User Claudio Busatto
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