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Gigabyte - Wikipedia

Gigabyte

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The gigabyte (/ˈɡɪɡəbaɪt, ˈdʒɪɡəbaɪt/)¹ is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix giga- means 10${}^9$ in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB.

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. 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. Thus, some usage of gigabyte has been ambiguous. To resolve this, IEC 80000-13 states that a gigabyte (GB) is 10${}^9$ bytes and specifies the term gibibyte (GiB) to denote 2${}^{30}$ bytes. 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. Analogously, a memory module that is labeled as having the size “1 GB” has one gibibyte (1 GiB) of storage capacity.

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. Congress has deemed the decimal definition of gigabyte to be the ‘preferred’ one for the purposes of ‘U.S. trade and commerce. ’”²³

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. The prefix giga- may be pronounced two ways. “gigabyte”. Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d. “gigabyte”. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. OCLC 1032680871. ↩

2. “Order Granting Motion to Dismiss” (PDF). United States District Court. Retrieved 24 January 2020. ↩

3. See also Dinan v. SanDisk LLC, No. 20-15287 (9th Cir. Feb. 11, 2021) https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16989791406584358656 ↩

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