Convert Kilobyte (10^3 bytes) (kB (10^3)) to Bit (b) instantly.
About these units
Kilobyte (10^3 bytes) (kB (10^3))
A decimal kilobyte equals 1,000 bytes, reflecting the SI prefix kilo = 10³. Storage device manufacturers standardize on this definition because it scales cleanly and simplifies marketing and specification. This creates a mismatch with binary kilobytes (1,024 bytes) historically used in RAM and file systems. As storage capacities grew, this discrepancy became increasingly noticeable, leading standards bodies to promote explicit binary prefixes (KiB, MiB) for clarity. Despite these efforts, decimal kilobytes remain dominant in contexts such as hard drives, flash memory packaging, and communication standards.
Bit (b)
A bit is the most fundamental unit of digital information, representing a binary value of 0 or 1. In physical systems, a bit corresponds to two distinguishable states—such as high/low voltage, magnetic polarity, or light/dark in optical systems. Bits form the basis of all digital computation: CPUs manipulate bits through logic gates, memory stores bits in capacitors or magnetic cells, and communication networks transmit bits as electrical pulses or photons. Although extremely small in size, bits accumulate into vast structures—from kilobytes of text to petabytes of cloud storage. Every digital phenomenon—files, images, videos, software—ultimately reduces to sequences of bits. The bit is the "atom" of information.