Gigabits to Bits (Gb to bit)
1 gigabit equals 1,000,000,000 bits exactly.
How to convert gigabits to bits
To convert gigabits to bits, multiply the number of gigabits by 1,000,000,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply bits by 1×10⁻⁹.
bits = gigabits × 1,000,000,000
Example: 10 gigabits = 10,000,000,000 bits.
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
Gigabit (Gb)
1,000,000,000 bits (125 MB).
Gigabit is one billion bits, or 125 million bytes. In the IEC notation it is written Gbit, while IEEE 1541-2002 recommends Gb, which may be confused with GB for gigabyte. The binary counterpart, the gibibit, is 2 to the thirtieth bits. Network links and fiber are usually rated in gigabits per second, because data transfer rates are measured in decimal SI multiples.
Memory is where gigabits and binary habits collide. Chip capacity is often given in binary multiples using the ambiguous G prefix rather than the IEC Gi, so a DRAM chip advertised as 1 GB has 2 to the thirtieth bytes. The Wikipedia article on the bit says this was still causing difficulty for software designers as of 2022. When you see a gigabit rate, divide by eight for gigabytes per second.
1 gigabit = 125,000,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Gigabit; Wikipedia: Bit
Bit (bit)
The smallest unit of digital information: a single 0 or 1. Eight bits make a byte.
Bit is short for binary digit, and the word was coined by John W. Tukey. He shortened the phrase in a Bell Labs memo dated 9 January 1947. Claude Shannon first used it in print in his 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication and credited Tukey with the word. The idea predates the name: Ralph Hartley proposed a logarithmic measure of information in 1928, and punched cards, invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon in 1732 and developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804, already stored one bit per hole position.
A bit holds one of two values, written 0 or 1, and everything digital is built from them. Eight bits make a byte, so a bit is one eighth of a byte. Symbols for the unit are not settled: the IEC standard uses bit, while IEEE 1541-2002 recommends a lowercase b, with uppercase B reserved for the byte. The difference matters because internet speeds and file sizes are quoted in different units.
1 bit = 0.125 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Related conversions
- Bits to gigabits (reverse)
- Gigabits to bytes
- Gigabits to kilobytes
- Gigabits to megabytes
- Gigabits to gigabytes
- Gigabits to terabytes
- Gigabits to petabytes
- Gigabits to kibibytes
- Gigabits to mebibytes
- Gigabits to gibibytes
- Gigabits to tebibytes
- Gigabits to kilobits
- Gigabits to megabits
- Bytes to bits
- Kilobytes to bits
- Megabytes to bits
- Gigabytes to bits
- Terabytes to bits
- Petabytes to bits
- Kibibytes to bits
- Mebibytes to bits
- Gibibytes to bits
- Tebibytes to bits
- Kilobits to bits
- Megabits to bits
See all digital storage units.