A less-awkward usage occurred to me yesterday for the KF notation. Instead of referring to four gigbytes (4 GB) as “4 3-KF” use “4 KF3”. So the scheme becomes KB = KF1, MG = KF2, GB = KF3, TB = KF4, PB = KF5, and so on.

Early microcomputers had a maximum memory of 64 KF1. The early IBM PC architecture had 640 KF1 of useable memory when there was 1 KF2 of RAM.

It hasn’t been that long ago that 512 KF2 or even 640 KF2 were common in modern PCs. Today several KF3 are common and 10 or 20 KF3 in big servers.

Now it’s not uncommon for a home user to have one or several KF4 of disk space.

Corporate data stores can easily span several KF5 and get into the KF6. Reports of data resources in the KF7 realm are starting to surface..

Original post: KF Notation for Big Numbers