4 ms·

OK but why Apple then says "GB" for RAM sizes in its marketing materials rather than these bullshit units? I guess "17.179869184 GB RAM" doesn't have the same r

by varjag 6y ago

OK but why Apple then says "GB" for RAM sizes in its marketing materials rather than these bullshit units? I guess "17.179869184 GB RAM" doesn't have the same ring to it?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
saurik 6y ago
Hard disks are typically sold with 1000-based units and memory is typically sold with 1024-based units: the market is inconsistent, and therefore so is the user interface; if you by 512 MB of RAM you get 512 MiB, but if you buy 1 TB of disk, you get only like 0.9 TiB, and so if you have a UI showing you how much space a file takes up it should (sadly) likely work different from a UI showing you how much space a process takes up :(.
- varjag 6y ago
  I am very aware HD manufacturers pushed through the megabyte rebranding via SI back in late 1990s. There is no good technical reason to have inherently power of two quantities in power of ten measures. The reason for re-standardization effort was deflection of legal responsibility for misleading marketing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Lawsuits_over_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Lawsuits_over_definition
  - soneil 6y ago
    Whats inherently power of two about them? I have two PS/2 era drives that predate your "rebranding". One, 20MB (actual 21.3MB or 20.3MiB) has a CHS geometry 612x4x17. The other, 40MB (41.5MB or 39.5MiB) has a CHS geometry of 1038x2x39. None of these values are powers of two (other than heads, because platters happen to have two sides) I'd argue that all we're seeing here is the long, long tail of lazy shortcuts taken in the early-home-computer era. Not a truth, a lazy shortcut - that software took as convention and hardware didn't.
    - Volundr 6y ago
      TIL that hard drive platters are two sided. It makes perfect sense you can store data on both sides, yet never occurred to me before.
    - varjag 6y ago
      Addressing and alignment of computer memory on binary architectures is happening on binary boundaries due to arithmetic properties. You can not buy a 1,000,000,000 bytes RAM chip for that reason. Magnetic and paper tape, drums, delay lines and hard disks are (imperfect) hacks to have more memory due to cost of RAM.
      - grishka 6y ago
        > due to cost of RAM. And its volatility.

by varjag 6y ago

OK but why Apple then says "GB" for RAM sizes in its marketing materials rather than these bullshit units? I guess "17.179869184 GB RAM" doesn't have the same ring to it?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

saurik 6y ago

Hard disks are typically sold with 1000-based units and memory is typically sold with 1024-based units: the market is inconsistent, and therefore so is the user interface; if you by 512 MB of RAM you get 512 MiB, but if you buy 1 TB of disk, you get only like 0.9 TiB, and so if you have a UI showing you how much space a file takes up it should (sadly) likely work different from a UI showing you how much space a process takes up :(.

varjag 6y ago
I am very aware HD manufacturers pushed through the megabyte rebranding via SI back in late 1990s. There is no good technical reason to have inherently power of two quantities in power of ten measures. The reason for re-standardization effort was deflection of legal responsibility for misleading marketing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Lawsuits_over_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Lawsuits_over_definition
- soneil 6y ago
  Whats inherently power of two about them? I have two PS/2 era drives that predate your "rebranding". One, 20MB (actual 21.3MB or 20.3MiB) has a CHS geometry 612x4x17. The other, 40MB (41.5MB or 39.5MiB) has a CHS geometry of 1038x2x39. None of these values are powers of two (other than heads, because platters happen to have two sides) I'd argue that all we're seeing here is the long, long tail of lazy shortcuts taken in the early-home-computer era. Not a truth, a lazy shortcut - that software took as convention and hardware didn't.
  - Volundr 6y ago
    TIL that hard drive platters are two sided. It makes perfect sense you can store data on both sides, yet never occurred to me before.
  - varjag 6y ago
    Addressing and alignment of computer memory on binary architectures is happening on binary boundaries due to arithmetic properties. You can not buy a 1,000,000,000 bytes RAM chip for that reason. Magnetic and paper tape, drums, delay lines and hard disks are (imperfect) hacks to have more memory due to cost of RAM.
    - grishka 6y ago
      > due to cost of RAM. And its volatility.