gibit

Gibit is a data unit used in information technology to denote 2^30 bits, reflecting the binary-prefix convention used for expressing data in powers of two. It is commonly referred to as the gibibit, and is sometimes abbreviated as Gib.

Definition: One Gibit equals 2^30 bits, i.e., 1,073,741,824 bits. In bytes, this is 134,217,728 bytes, or 128 mebibytes.

Usage: The gibibit is rarely used in everyday specifications, where decimal gigabits (Gb) are standard for network speeds. It appears in specialized or theoretical contexts where binary-prefix consistency is valued, such as some hardware documentation or discussions about memory capacity and bandwidth measured with powers-of-two scaling.

Relation to other units: In decimal terms, 1 Gibit is approximately 1.074 × 10^9 bits, i.e., about 1.074 Gb. Conversely, 1 Gb equals about 0.931 Gibit. The corresponding binary-byte unit is the gibibyte (GiB), which equals 2^30 bytes, or 1,073,741,824 bytes; a Gibit is eight times smaller than a gibibyte.

See also: gibibyte, mebibit, binary prefixes, gigabit.