gibibyte

A gibibyte, symbol GiB, is a unit of digital information equal to 2^30 bytes, which is 1,073,741,824 bytes. It is part of the IEC binary prefixes introduced to provide unambiguous representations of data sizes that are based on powers of two. The adjacent decimal unit, the gigabyte (GB), equals 10^9 bytes, so 1 GiB is about 1.074 GB.

The binary prefixes use KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, PiB, and EiB to denote 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, 2^40, 2^50, and 2^60 bytes respectively. This naming convention was standardized to avoid confusion between binary and decimal measurements in computing.

Usage and context: GiB is commonly used to describe memory capacities such as RAM and graphics memory, as well as certain software and system reports. In practice, some hardware manufacturers and software tools still present capacities in decimal gigabytes (GB), which can lead to apparent discrepancies when converting between units. When precise binary sizing is important, GiB is the preferred term.

Relationship to other units: 1 GiB equals 1024 MiB, and 1 MiB equals 1024 KiB. In decimal terms, 1 GiB is approximately 1.074 GB. The distinction between GiB and GB is part of a broader effort to clarify data size representations in computing.