User:Swtpc6800/Adoption

Adoption (July 2007)
I have been trying to measure the adoption of the IEC binary prefixes in the computer world. There is no legal obligation to use this IEC and ANSI/IEEE standard. Every IEEE standard has these disclaimers. "Use of an IEEE Standard is wholly voluntary." "The existence of an IEEE Standard does not imply that there are no other ways to produce, test, measure, purchase, market, or provide other goods and services related to the scope of the IEEE Standard." After the ASME vs Hydrolevel antitrust case was upheld by the Supreme Court standards organizations are abundantly cautious about pushing their standards.

The use of MB and megabyte for binary values is more than common usage, there is 50 years industry practice codified in ANSI/IEEE and other standards. The previous standards formally defined what the industry was already using. Coining new terms like mebibyte is an attempt to change industry practice. In 1984 the ANSI/IEEE Std 91-1984 and IEC 60617-12 standards recommended that everyone start drawing schematic symbols of AND gates as a square box with an ampersand in it. Changing something that the industry thinks is working is very difficult.

The only significant usage is in elite standards groups. I would have the say the adoption of the IEC binary prefixes is minuscule and static. One of the major points on the consumer confusion argument was the difference between RAM, floppy disk and hard disk measurements. Floppy disks are gone, and all hard disk now come with a disclaimer stating that a GB is a billion bytes. The rest of the computer industry is staying with previous ANSI/IEEE standards that define KB, MB and GB as binary units.

Survey Method
I looked at the IEC binary prefix use by news, technical and reference publications; manufactures of computer components, semiconductors, and computer systems; operating system and application software; retail sales of computers and software; and other standards organizations.

The measurement methodology should give weight to the importance of a source. An established technical publication with a monthly circulation of 400,000 readers and an online edition is more influential than a small circulation newsletter or a personal blog. Intel has more clout than the 87th largest maker of novelty USB flash memory drives.

One search method used was Google's Advanced Search with the site limited to the company domain. For example: Mbyte site:forbes.com. The results have to be analyzed to eliminate blog content and un-edited press releases. Forbes has over 1600 hits on MB, and 19 on Mbyte. Searching MIB is a problem because it is a popular acronym (Management Information Base). Add another term such as DRAM, 64 or 512 to MIB to get better results. Forbes uses MB and GB.

Rather than just making up a list in each category, I used rankings from various sources. The lists are not perfect, but the top companies in each category make the lists.

Computer Industry Press
The IntelliQuest CIMS Business Study is a survey publishers and advertiser to determine pecking order of computer magazines. It claims the three largest publishers are International Data Group (IDG), CMP and Ziff Davis Media.

Here are the circulation numbers for the North American magazines of these publishers. This is not a definitive list of computer industry magazines but it is a good cross section. These magazines also have online versions.

None of these magazines use the IEC prefixes. They all use MB and GB with the exception of two CMP magazines; InformationWeek and EE Times also use Mbyte and GByte.

International Data Group (IDG): CIO (twice per month - 140,000}, Computerworld (weekly - 180,038), Macworld (monthly - 350,000), PC World (monthly - 853,952), InfoWorld (was around 300,000 - now web only)

CMP: InformationWeek (weekly - 440,000), EE Times (weekly 150,000) ,Dr. Dobb's Journal (monthly 120,000)

Ziff Davis Media: PC Magazine (bi-weekly 700,000), eWEEK (weekly - 400,100)

Business Press
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Forbes and Fortune all use the traditional MB and GB. All of the mainstream newspapers and magazines also use MB and GB.

Technical Journals
The IEEE and ACM have their journals on-line to members and subscribers. The contents can be searched by Google but the articles can not be viewed. Some universities and businesses have access in their libraries. The most effective searching required access to the IEEE and ACM search tools.

The terms Kbyte and Mbyte were the most common units in the 1970s and 1980s and are still very popular. The IEEE Computer Society magazine, Computer, still uses them. Current technical journals allow the authors to select the unit. There are some articles using the IEC prefixes but Mbyte and MB are still more common. The April and June 2007 issues of the IEEE Computer Society magazine Computer do not have any IEC binary prefixes, only Kbyte, Mbyte and Gbyte. These units are recommended by the IEEE Computer Society Style Guide.
 * "MB: megabyte; use Mbyte (40-Mbyte hard disk, 12 Mbytes of memory)"

Here is a sample of current technical articles from IEE and ACM publications.

The authors are with Intel Corp.

The authors are with Toshiba Corp.

The authors are with IBM Corp.

The authors are with Microsoft Research.

The authors are with the University of California, Berkeley.

Harry Goldstein is a Senior Associate Editor for the IEEE Spectrum.

The authors are with IBM Corp. "completing on-chip memory hierarchy is 4 MiB of embedded DRAM" The IEC binary prefixes are explained in footnotes like this: " MiB = 1,048,576 (mebibyte - http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefixes) "

Dictionary and Encyclopedia
byte. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 28, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition: 6:18 PM 6/28/2007

"Because a byte contains so little information, the processing and storage capacities of computer hardware are usually given in kilobytes (1,024 bytes) or megabytes (1,048,576 bytes). Still larger capacities are expressed in gigabytes (about one billion bytes) and terabytes (one trillion bytes)."

"megabyte n." The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Eleventh edition revised. Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2006. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 29 June 2007

"megabyte ( abbrev.: Mb or MB ) n. (Computing) a unit of information equal to one million or (strictly) 1,048,576 bytes."

Computer Component
The research company, iSuppli Corp, measures various segments of the electronics industry and publishes the rankings. They are frequently quoted in the technical and mainstream press.

Top ten Chip Suppliers, December 2006
 * Intel, Samsung Electronics, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, STMicroelectronics, Renesas Technology, Advanced Micro Devices, Hynix, NXP, Freescale Semiconductor

DRAM suppliers, April 2007
 * Samsung, Hynix, Qimonda, Elpida, Micron, Powerchip, Nanya, ProMos, Etro, Winbond (All use MB and Mb)

Top-10 Third Party DRAM Module Supplier, October 2006
 * Kingston Technology, Smart Modular Technology, A-Data, Crucial Technology, TwinMOS, MA Lab, Ramaxel Technology, Corsair Memory Apacer Technology, Trandscend (All use MB)

Six major HDD suppliers, June 2007
 * Seagate Technology, Western Digital Corp., Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST), Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd., Toshiba Corp.

Computer Equipment Companies
Forbes Technology Hardware Equipment Ranking
 * IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Dell, Apple, Toshiba

Software Companies
Forbes has a list of top software companies but over half do consulting or other behind the scene work. Here are the companies that sell software applications.
 * Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Symantec, CA, Adobe Systems, Intuit, Autodesk,

Here are some other significant software companies from the Linux, FSF world.
 * Red Hat, Novell, Mozilla, Apache

Retailers
InternetRetailer.com published a survey to the top e-retail businesses. 
 * Amazon, Staples, Office Depot, Dell, HP Home & Home Office Store, OfficeMax, Sears Holding Corp, CDW, SonyStyle, Newegg were the top ten. Most sell computer equipment. There could be a better selection but this is a workable list.

None of these retailers use the IEC binary prefixes.

Clarify standards used for binary prefixes
The use of KB (kilobyte) and MB (megabyte) for binary values is more than common usage, there is 50 years industry practice codified in ANSI/IEEE and other standards. Kilo (K) as 1024 and Mega (M) as 1,048,576 were defined over 20 years ago in ANSI/IEEE Std 1084-1986. KB, MB and GB (as binary prefixes) are defined in IEEE 100, The Authoritative Dictionary of IEEE Standards Terms, Seventh Edition, 2000.

The computer industry sponsors standards organizations and adheres to published standards. In addition to traditional groups like the IEEE Standards Association and JEDEC there are many other ad hoc standards groups such as Universal Serial Bus, PC Card , and Serial ATA. The industry has just ignored the IEC 60027/IEEE 1541 binary prefix standard. In 1984 the ANSI/IEEE Std 91-1984 and IEC 60617-12 standards recommended that everyone start drawing schematic symbols of AND gates as a square box with an ampersand in it. Changing something that the industry thinks is working is very difficult.

There is no obligation to use the IEC and ANSI/IEEE binary prefix standard. Every IEEE standard has these disclaimers. "Use of an IEEE Standard is wholly voluntary." "The existence of an IEEE Standard does not imply that there are no other ways to produce, test, measure, purchase, market, or provide other goods and services related to the scope of the IEEE Standard." After the ASME vs Hydrolevel antitrust case was upheld by the Supreme Court standards organizations are abundantly cautious about imposing their standards.

I have been trying to measure the adoption of the IEC binary prefixes in the computer world. I looked at the IEC binary prefix use by news, technical and reference publications; manufactures of computer components, semiconductors, and computer systems; operating system and application software; retail sales of computers and software; and other standards organization. The only significant usage is in elite standards groups. I would have the say the adoption of the IEC binary prefixes is minuscule and static. See Talk:Binary_prefix

An interesting point is that the flash memory card and hard disk drive manufactures use MB to mean 1,000,000 bytes as the IEC recommends. Both groups have been sued for misrepresenting the capacity of the products. The plaintiffs acknowledged the IEC standard exist but stated the computer industry ignores them. Companies that use MB as 220 have not had legal problems.

I propose that we add a new paragraph to the binary prefix section clarifying that the "common" binary prefixes are defined by ANSI and IEEE standards. This paragraph would go between the existing first and second paragraph.

Use of the prefixes kilo, mega, etc., and the symbols K, and M, etc to specify binary multiples is based on 50 years of industry practice and has been codified in ANSI/IEEE standards for 20 years. The predominate use of these prefixes by technical publications, computer hardware and software companies is reflected in IEEE 100, The Authoritative Dictionary of IEEE Standards Terms, Seventh Edition, 2000.