Gigabits to Kibibytes (Gb to KiB)

1 gigabit equals 122,070.3125 kibibytes exactly.

How to convert gigabits to kibibytes

To convert gigabits to kibibytes, multiply the number of gigabits by 122,070.3125. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kibibytes by 0.000008192.

kibibytes = gigabits × 122,070.3125

Example: 10 gigabits = 1,220,703.125 kibibytes.

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)

ComputingCurrent unit

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

Kibibyte (KiB)

ComputingCurrent unit

Exactly 1,024 bytes (2¹⁰). The IEC name for the binary kilobyte, used by operating systems and memory specifications.

Kibibyte is the first of the names the IEC approved in December 1998 for binary multiples, built from kilobinary. The IUPAC's Interdivisional Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols had proposed binary prefixes in 1995, and the IEC published them in January 1999. The symbol KiB adds an i to the SI symbol, with the K capitalized. NIST says the names keep the first two letters of each SI prefix and add bi, to signal binary.

One KiB is exactly 1,024 bytes, about 2.4 percent more than a kilobyte. The standard is now IEC 80000-13, supported by the BIPM, IEC and NIST. In practice the symbols are rarely used outside a few places such as KDE and Qt-based applications, which can switch between SI and binary units. Donald Knuth jokingly suggested in 1999 calling it a large kilobyte, KKB.

1 kibibyte = 1,024 bytes (exactly).

Sources: NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Kibibyte

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.