Gibibits to Kilobytes (Gibit to kB)
1 gibibit equals 134,217.728 kilobytes exactly.
How to convert gibibits to kilobytes
To convert gibibits to kilobytes, multiply the number of gibibits by 134,217.728. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilobytes by 0.000007450580597 (rounded).
kilobytes = gibibits × 134,217.728
Example: 10 gibibits = 1,342,177.28 kilobytes.
Decimal prefixes (kB, MB, GB) are powers of 1,000; binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) are powers of 1,024. Storage makers use decimal; Windows reports binary but labels it GB.
About these units
Gibibit (Gibit)
Exactly 1,073,741,824 bits.
Equal to 2^30 bits, or 1,073,741,824 bits, the gibibit (Gibit) is the unit behind many memory chip densities. Dividing by eight gives 134,217,728 bytes, which is 128 mebibytes. The gibi prefix, from the first two letters of giga plus bi, was among the first three binary prefixes the IEC approved in December 1998.
Its decimal cousin, the gigabit, is 10^9 bits, so a gibibit is about 7.4 percent larger. That gap is why a quantity described in gigabits and the same quantity in binary units can differ noticeably when the two conventions are mixed. Telecom speeds are quoted in decimal gigabits per second, while the gibi names exist so that a binary count can be stated without ambiguity.
The symbol Gibit is a bit count; the byte equivalent, with capital B, is the gibibyte, GiB, which is eight times larger.
1 gibibit = 134,217,728 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Binary prefix; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Bit
Kilobyte (kB)
1,000 bytes in the SI (decimal) definition. Older software and Windows sometimes use KB to mean 1,024 bytes; see kibibyte.
Few units have had two meanings for so long. By the mid-1960s most computers used binary addressing, so memory sizes came in powers of two and engineers borrowed kilo to mean 1,024. IBM documentation for the System/360 in 1964 used an uppercase K for 1,024. Hard disk makers took a different path from the start. The IEC later settled the question: kilobyte, symbol kB, means 1,000 bytes, and 1,024 bytes is a kibibyte.
Floppy disks show the muddle. The Shugart SA-400 of 1976 held 109,375 bytes unformatted and was advertised as 110 Kbyte, the decimal way, while a 1978 Tandon double-density disk held 368,640 bytes, or 360 times 1,024, and was sold as 360 KB. Windows still divides by 1,024, so a 65,536-byte file appears as 64 KB there, while Mac OS X Snow Leopard and later would call it 66 kB. A kilobyte is also tiny: Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado is 12,843 bytes.
1 kilobyte = 1,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Kilobyte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Related conversions
- Kilobytes to gibibits (reverse)
- Gibibits to bytes
- Gibibits to megabytes
- Gibibits to gigabytes
- Gibibits to terabytes
- Bytes to kilobytes
- Megabytes to kilobytes
- Gigabytes to kilobytes
- Terabytes to kilobytes
- Bits to kilobytes
- Petabytes to kilobytes
- Kibibytes to kilobytes
- Mebibytes to kilobytes
- Gibibytes to kilobytes
- Tebibytes to kilobytes
- Kilobits to kilobytes
- Megabits to kilobytes
See all digital storage units.