Gigabytes to Kibibits conversion

What is a Gigabyte?

Gigabyte, $GB$, is a unit of digital information. Giga is used as a unit prefix in metrics system. It represent a numerical value $10^9$ or $1,000,000,000$. List of SI prefix can be found on Wikipidia.

There are two common ways unit of information is represented. One is in decimal (base 10) form and the other is in power of 2 (binary). $Gigabyte$ is referring to the base 10 format, unlike $Gigibyte$ which is referring to base 2 format.

$$1\,Gigabyte => 1\, GB\,(shorthand form)$$

$$1\,GB = 1,000,000,000\,byte = 10^9 bytes$$

More examples can be found on Stanford's Kilobytes Megabytes Gigabytes Terabytes article

What is kibibits?

Kibibits (kibit, kiB) are a unit of digital information that measures the amount of binary data. The term "kibi" was coined by Bruce Allen in 1995 as part of an effort to create a more intuitive and consistent set of units for measuring computer data.

One kibibit (kiB) is equal to:

1 kilobit (kb) 1024 bits 128 bytes

In comparison, the kilo prefix used in base-10 units (like kilograms or kilowatts) means 1000. However, when applied to binary units like kilobytes (kB), it's actually 1024.

To give you a better idea of how kibibits compare to other units:

• Kilobit (kb): 1 kb = 1000 bits
• Kibibit (kiB): 1 kiB = 1024 bits

Kibibits are used in the International Electrotechnical Commission's (IEC) standard IEC 80000-13 for quantifying and expressing information technology quantities.

The use of kibibits, rather than kilobits, avoids rounding errors when converting between units. It ensures that calculations involving binary data are more accurate.

In practical terms, the difference between a kilobit and a kibibit might seem small, but it becomes significant when dealing with large amounts of digital information.