Gigabytes to Mebibits (GB to Mibit)
1 gigabyte equals 7,629.394531 mebibits (rounded).
How to convert gigabytes to mebibits
To convert gigabytes to mebibits, multiply the number of gigabytes by 7,629.394531. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply mebibits by 0.000131072.
mebibits = gigabytes × 7,629.394531
Example: 10 gigabytes = 76,293.94531 mebibits.
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
Gigabyte (GB)
1,000,000,000 bytes (decimal). Storage manufacturers and phone makers use this definition.
The gigabyte is where the decimal-versus-binary dispute turned into lawsuits. Drive makers advertise capacity in decimal units, so a 500 GB drive holds 500 billion bytes, but Windows reports sizes in binary units and shows about 465.7 of what it labels GB for the same drive. Early challenges against Western Digital and Seagate were settled, with Western Digital adding disclaimers that usable capacity may differ from the advertised figure.
A 2019 lawsuit was decided in the manufacturers' favor, with the court relying on the decimal definition. For scale, one gigabyte holds roughly an hour of standard-definition video at 2.2 Mbit/s. A single-layer DVD+R holds about 4.7 GB and a single-layer Blu-ray about 25 GB. RAM is still often sized in binary gigabytes, which the IEC would call gibibytes.
1 gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Gigabyte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; Wikipedia: Gibibyte
Mebibit (Mibit)
Exactly 1,048,576 bits.
Mebibit means 2^20 bits exactly, which is 1,048,576 bits, or 131,072 bytes (128 kibibytes). It comes from the IEC's 1998 binary prefix set, with mebi formed from the first two letters of mega plus bi. The symbol is Mibit.
Compared with the decimal megabit of 1,000,000 bits, a mebibit is about 4.9 percent larger. As an arithmetic example, 16 mebibits come to 16 x 1,048,576 = 16,777,216 bits, which is 2 mebibytes. Serial links and network speeds, by contrast, are conventionally counted in decimal megabits per second.
NIST's page on binary prefixes explains the intended pronunciation, with the first syllable said like the matching SI prefix and the second as bee.
1 mebibit = 131,072 bytes (exactly).
Sources: NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; Wikipedia: Bit
Related conversions
- Mebibits to gigabytes (reverse)
- Gigabytes to bytes
- Gigabytes to kilobytes
- Gigabytes to megabytes
- Gigabytes to terabytes
- Gigabytes to bits
- Gigabytes to petabytes
- Gigabytes to kibibytes
- Gigabytes to mebibytes
- Gigabytes to gibibytes
- Gigabytes to tebibytes
- Gigabytes to kilobits
- Gigabytes to megabits
- Bytes to mebibits
- Kilobytes to mebibits
- Megabytes to mebibits
- Terabytes to mebibits
See all digital storage units.