16KB

16 kilobyte (16 KB) is a unit of information used to describe data size or memory capacity. When the kilobyte is interpreted in binary form, 1 KB = 1024 bytes, so 16 KB = 16 × 1024 = 16,384 bytes. In decimal usage, 1 KB = 1000 bytes, yielding 16,000 bytes; both conventions appear in different contexts. In binary terms, 16 KB is 0.015625 mebibytes (MiB), or about 0.016 megabytes (MB) when expressed in decimal units.

In computing, 16 KB commonly appears as a small block of memory, a data segment, or a cache size in early machines. Many 8-bit and early 16-bit systems used kilobyte-scale memory, and some later systems continued to reference memory and paging in kilobyte-sized units. For files, a 16 KB block is roughly the size of a short text document, a tiny bitmap, or a small configuration file, depending on encoding and compression.

Terminology can be ambiguous. The symbol KB is traditionally used for kilobyte, but the IEC standard designates KiB for kibibyte (1024 bytes) to reduce confusion. In practice, many discussions of memory still use KB to mean 1024-byte blocks, while strict terminology distinguishes KiB for 1024-byte units. Understanding the context helps clarify whether 16 KB means 16 × 1024 bytes or a decimal 16,000 bytes.