Literally every number in a computer is base-2, not just RAM addressing. Everything is ulimately bits, pins, and wires. The physical and logical interface between your oddly sized disk and your computer? Also some base-2.

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fc417fc802 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Even the disk sectors are in base 2. It's only the marketing that's in base 10.

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hmry 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Not everything is made from wires and transistors. And that's why these things are usually not measured in powers of 2:

- magnetic media

- optical media

- radio waves

- time

There's good reasons for having power-of-2 sectors (they need to get loaded into RAM), but there's really no compelling reason to have a power-of-2 number of sectors. If you can fit 397 sectors, only putting in 256 is wasteful.

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wvenable 2 days ago | parent [-]

Since everything ultimately ends up inside a base-2 computer across base-2 bus that even if these media aren't subject to the same considerations it still makes sense to measure them that way.

The choice would be effectively arbitrary, the number of actual bits or bytes is the same regardless of the multiplier that you use. But since it's for a computer, it makes sense to use units that are comparable (e.g. RAM and HD).

	▲	fc417fc802 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Buses and networking fit best with base 10 bits (not bytes) per second for reasons that are hopefully obvious. But I agree with you that everything else naturally lends itself to base 2.