Embedded Memory & Transmission Time Converter

SI vs IEC Standards: Storage vendors specify drives in decimal SI units (1 KB = 1000 B), whereas microcontrollers and operating systems measure RAM/Flash in binary IEC units (1 KiB = 1024 B). This results in a ~2.4% discrepancy at the KB level, rising to ~7.3% at the GB level.

Transmission Time: Calculated as Time = Bits / Baud Rate. For UART, 1 byte is calculated as 10 bits (1 start bit, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit) due to framing overhead.

ADC Buffer Fill Time: Calculated as Time = Total Bytes / (Sample Rate × Bytes Per Sample). This helper predicts when a DMA memory block will trigger a Half-Complete or Transfer-Complete interrupt.

When you need it: Sizing a firmware image against available flash, or working out how long a buffer takes to transmit at a given baud rate or link speed.

Worked example: 256 KiB = 262144 bytes over a 115200 bps UART (8N1 = 10 bits/byte) takes 262144 × 10 / 115200 ≈ 22.8 s. Note KiB (×1024) vs KB (×1000): 256 KiB = 262144 B but 256 KB = 256000 B.

Tips & gotchas:

• Memory (flash/RAM) is binary — KiB/MiB in powers of 1024; link throughput is usually decimal kb/s and in bits.
• 8N1 UART framing adds start+stop bits, so effective byte rate is baud/10, ~25% overhead.
• Real links lose more to protocol framing, ACKs and retries — treat the raw figure as a best case.
• Watch the bit-vs-byte factor of 8: 1 MB/s ≈ 8 Mbit/s.