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Gigabyte


The gigabyte (/ˈɡɪɡəbt/ GIG-ə-byt or /ˈɪɡəbt/) is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore one gigabyte is 1000000000bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB.

This definition is used in all contexts of science, engineering, business, and many areas of computing, including hard drive, solid state drive, and tape capacities, as well as data transmission speeds. However, the term is also used in some fields of computer science and information technology to denote 1073741824 (10243 or 230) bytes, particularly for sizes of RAM. The use of gigabyte is thus ambiguous. For semiconductor RAM, the gigabyte denotes 1073741824bytes. For hard drive capacities as described and marketed by the drive manufacturers, the gigabyte denotes 1000000000bytes, but when a 500-GB drive's capacity is displayed by, for example, Microsoft Windows, it is reported as 465 GB, where GB then means 1073741824bytes.


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