IEC - International Electrotechnical Commission Escreveu:The fact is that, while it may not have mattered much to the average PC user until the last few years, a kilobyte is not necessarily the 10^3 or 1 000 bytes that its SI prefix ‘kilo’ would seem to indicate. SI is a decimal (base ten) system, but computers essentially only recognize whether an electrical signal is on or off, represented by a 1 or a 0. Mathematically speaking, they are binary (base two) systems. When it comes to scientists and engineers in the IT and telecommunications industries, such sources of confusion and potential incompatibility certainly do matter, and increasingly so as the numbers that computers crunch get ever bigger.
The second edition of IEC 60027-2 (Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics, to give it its full title) was developed specifically to meet industry’s expressed needs in data processing and data transmission. It eliminates confusion by setting out the prefixes and symbols for the binary, as opposed to decimal, multiples that most often apply in these fields.
Resumindo, em novembro de 2000 a IEC, com o apoio do CIPM (International Committee for Weights and Measures) e do IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
decidiu acrescentar essa relação entre sistemas décimais e binários, ao criar o documento "IEC 60027-2: Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology - Part 2".
Embora ainda haja muita confusão sobre o assunto é bastante simples a relação, como se pode verificar nos exemplos da imagem em cima.