Gigabit

Multiple-bit units
Decimal Value Metric 1000 kbit kilobit 10002 Mbit megabit 10003 Gbit gigabit 10004 Tbit terabit 10005 Pbit petabit 10006 Ebit exabit 10007 Zbit zettabit 10008 Ybit yottabit 10009 Rbit ronnabit 100010 Qbit quettabit	Binary Value IEC Memory 1024 Kibit kibibit Kbit Kb kilobit 10242 Mibit mebibit Mbit Mb megabit 10243 Gibit gibibit Gbit Gb gigabit 10244 Tibit tebibit — 10245 Pibit pebibit — 10246 Eibit exbibit — 10247 Zibit zebibit — 10248 Yibit yobibit — — —
Orders of magnitude of data

A gigabit is a unit of information or computer storage, abbreviated Gbit or sometimes Gb.

1 gigabit = 10⁹ = 1,000,000,000 bits (which is equal to 125 decimal megabytes)

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 fully 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 disk drives need not.

See also

• gibibit
• gigabyte
• gigabit per second
• binary prefix
• orders of magnitude (data)
• Gigabit ethernet and 10-gigabit Ethernet