IEC 60027
Encyclopedia
IEC 60027 is the International Electrotechnical Commission
's standard on Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology. It consists of several parts:
A closely related international standard on quantities
and units is ISO 31
. The ISO 31 and IEC 60027 Standards are being revised by the two standardization organizations in collaboration. The revised harmonized standard is known as ISO/IEC 80000
, Quantities and units. It supersedes both ISO 31 and part of IEC 60027.
to mean kibibit
, and kilobyte
to mean kibibyte
, just as earlier IEC standards deprecated the use of cycles per second to mean hertz
.
The 2008 ISO/IEC
IEC 80000-13:2008 document, 'Quantities and units – Part 13' cancels and replaces subclauses 3.8 and 3.9 -- (those defining prefixes for binary multiples)-- of the 2005 document 'IEC 60027-2'. "The only significant change is the addition of explicit definitions for some quantities." Per the ISO document-sales website, International Standard IEC 80000-13 was written by IEC technical committee 25 (the "Quantities and units" committee) and the letter symbols were "prepared in co-operation with ISO/TC 12."
International Electrotechnical Commission
The International Electrotechnical Commission is a non-profit, non-governmental international standards organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies – collectively known as "electrotechnology"...
's standard on Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology. It consists of several parts:
- IEC 60027-1: General
- IEC 60027-2: Telecommunications and electronics
- IEC 60027-3: Logarithmic and related quantities, and their units
- IEC 60027-4: Symbols for quantities to be used for rotating electrical machines
- IEC 60027-6: Control technology
- IEC 60027-7: Physiological quantities and units
A closely related international standard on quantities
Physical quantity
A physical quantity is a physical property of a phenomenon, body, or substance, that can be quantified by measurement.-Definition of a physical quantity:Formally, the International Vocabulary of Metrology, 3rd edition defines quantity as:...
and units is ISO 31
ISO 31
International Standard ISO 31 was the most widely respected style guide for the use of physical quantities and units of measurement, and formulas involving them, in scientific and educational documents worldwide...
. The ISO 31 and IEC 60027 Standards are being revised by the two standardization organizations in collaboration. The revised harmonized standard is known as ISO/IEC 80000
ISO/IEC 80000
International standard ISO 80000 or IEC 80000—depending on which of the two international standards bodies International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission is in charge of each respective part—is a style guide for the use of physical quantities and units...
, Quantities and units. It supersedes both ISO 31 and part of IEC 60027.
Binary prefixes
A 1999 addendum to IEC 60027-2 on binary prefixes has resulted in some public interest in the standard and is still being widely discussed in the computer community, as it firmly deprecates the use of kilobitKilobit
The kilobit is a multiple of the unit bit for digital information or computer storage. The prefix kilo is defined in the International System of Units as a multiplier of 103 , and therefore,...
to mean kibibit
Kibibit
The kibibit is a multiple of the bit, a unit of digital information storage, prefixed by the standards-based multiplier kibi , a binary prefix meaning 210...
, and kilobyte
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
to mean kibibyte
Kibibyte
The kibibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for quantities of digital information. The binary prefix kibi means 1024; therefore, 1 kibibyte is . The unit symbol for the kibibyte is KiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1999 and has been accepted for use...
, just as earlier IEC standards deprecated the use of cycles per second to mean hertz
Hertz
The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
.
The 2008 ISO/IEC
International Electrotechnical Commission
The International Electrotechnical Commission is a non-profit, non-governmental international standards organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies – collectively known as "electrotechnology"...
IEC 80000-13:2008 document, 'Quantities and units – Part 13' cancels and replaces subclauses 3.8 and 3.9 -- (those defining prefixes for binary multiples)-- of the 2005 document 'IEC 60027-2'. "The only significant change is the addition of explicit definitions for some quantities." Per the ISO document-sales website, International Standard IEC 80000-13 was written by IEC technical committee 25 (the "Quantities and units" committee) and the letter symbols were "prepared in co-operation with ISO/TC 12."
External links
- "Reference IEC 60027" (IEC Catalog, www.iec.ch)
- "IEC 60027-2 (2005-08) Ed. 3.0 Bilingual" (preview)