Gigabit

This article is about the unit of storage. For the networking technology, see Gigabit Ethernet.

v • d • e Multiples of bits
SI prefixes			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

A 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.

Gigabit

See also