- One billion bits.
- 1,073,741,824 (230) bits.
gigabit
Dictionary:
gig·a·bit (gĭg'ə-bĭt', jĭg'-)  |
n. Computer Science
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One billion bits. Also Gb, Gbit and G-bit. See giga and space/time.
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| SI decimal prefixes | IEC binary prefixes | |||
| Name (Symbol) |
Standard SI |
Binary usage |
Name (Symbol) |
Value |
| kilobit (kbit) | 103 | 210 | kibibit (Kibit) | 210 |
| megabit (Mbit) | 106 | 220 | mebibit (Mibit) | 220 |
| gigabit (Gbit) | 109 | 230 | gibibit (Gibit) | 230 |
| terabit (Tbit) | 1012 | 240 | tebibit (Tibit) | 240 |
| petabit (Pbit) | 1015 | 250 | pebibit (Pibit) | 250 |
| exabit (Ebit) | 1018 | 260 | exbibit (Eibit) | 260 |
| zettabit (Zbit) | 1021 | 270 | zebibit (Zibit) | 270 |
| yottabit (Ybit) | 1024 | 280 | yobibit (Yibit) | 280 |
| See also: Nibble · Byte · Multiples of bytes Orders of magnitude of data |
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This article is about the unit of storage. For the networking technology, see Gigabit Ethernet.
Gigabit is a unit of digital information storage, with the symbol Gbit (or Gb).
1 gigabit = 109 = 1,000,000,000 bits (which is equal to 125 decimal megabytes or 122 binary mebibytes, as 8 bits equals one byte)
The gigabit is closely related to the gibibit, which is unambiguously equal to 230 bits = 1,073,741,824 bits.
Note that the difference between a billion bits and a gibibit is greater than 7%. This is sufficient to make it economically compelling to represent certain classes of storage devices in (true) gigabits or gigabytes rather than gibibits/gibibytes. RAM and flash chips are usually required to have a capacity that is a power of two, but other devices like hard disk drives need not.
See also
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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