This definition is used in networking contexts and most storage media, particularly hard drives, flash-based storage, and DVDs, and is also consistent with the other uses of the SI prefix in computing, such as CPU clock speeds or measures of performance. This is the recommended definition by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). 1 GB = 1 000 000 000 bytes (= 1000 3 B = 10 9 B)īased on powers of 10, this definition uses the prefix giga- as defined in the International System of Units (SI).Nevertheless, the term gigabyte continues to be widely used with the following two different meanings:

By the end of 2007, the IEC Standard had been adopted by the IEEE, EU, and NIST, and in 2009 it was incorporated in the International System of Quantities. In 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) published standards for binary prefixes, requiring that the gigabyte strictly denote 1000 3 bytes and gibibyte denote 1024 3 bytes. As 1024 (2 10) is approximately 1000 (10 3), roughly corresponding to SI multiples, it was used for binary multiples as well. The latter binary usage originated as compromise technical jargon for byte multiples that needed to be expressed in a power of 2, but lacked a convenient name. The term gigabyte has a standard definition of 1000 3 bytes, as well as a discouraged meaning of 1024 3 bytes. Congress has deemed the decimal definition of gigabyte to be the 'preferred' one for the purposes of 'U.S. In response to litigation over whether the makers of electronic storage devices must conform to Microsoft Windows' use of a binary definition of 'GB' instead of the metric/decimal definition, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California rejected that argument, ruling that 'the U.S. Analogously, a memory module that is labeled as having the size ' 1 GB' has one gibibyte ( 1 GiB) of storage capacity. These differences are still readily seen, for example, when a 400 GB drive's capacity is displayed by Microsoft Windows as 372 GB instead of 372 GiB. To resolve this difficulty, IEC 80000-13 clarifies that a gigabyte (GB) is 10 9 bytes and specifies the term gibibyte (GiB) to denote 2 30 bytes. Thus, some usage of gigabyte has been ambiguous. The term is also used in some fields of computer science and information technology to denote 1 073 741 824 (1024 3 or 2 30) bytes, however, particularly for sizes of RAM. This definition is used in all contexts of science (especially data science), engineering, business, and many areas of computing, including storage capacities of hard drives, solid state drives, and tapes, as well as data transmission speeds. Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The prefix giga means 10 9 in the International System of Units (SI). The gigabyte ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ ɡ ə b aɪ t, ˈ dʒ ɪ ɡ ə b aɪ t/) is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information.

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