5 ms·

G stands for giga, exactly 1000 units. the general understanding is 1024, but this would technically be a Gibi- (abbreviated to GiB or Gib) the small b stands

by y4mi 10y ago

G stands for giga, exactly 1000 units. the general understanding is 1024, but this would technically be a Gibi- (abbreviated to GiB or Gib) the small b stands for bit, which is an eighth of a byte. a big B stands for byte. So a GB is exactly 1000 bytes, or 8000 bit

graycat 10y ago
> G stands for giga, exactly 1000 units. Actually that is the meaning of K, as in Kb or KB. Giga is not for "1000 units" but for 1 bilion "units" or, for the power of 2 approximation 2^30 = 1,073,741,824. I was just trying to be nice to the person who wrote the post I responded to. It seemed to me that their post needed to distinguish between Gb, gigabit, and GB, gigabyte. Not strictly, of course, because in principle the post could have been correct with either Gb or GB. But usually communications speeds are in terms of bits, and file sizes in terms of bytes. So, monthly download limits are commonly in terms of bits or bytes -- i can't say. But the file sizes downloaded for Windows 10 are likely usually in terms of bytes. So, if Windows 10 needs 10 billion bytes, then that is 10 GB. Then that would need communications of about 80 Gb (less in case of data compression; more for overhead for TCP/IP, etc.). Or 10 Gb would be only 1.25 GB which seems small for copy or full update of Windows 10. So, net, I was guessing that the Windows 10 size would be about 10 GB, not 10 Gb. Then for the communications limit, that could be in Gb or GB. That is, I was responding to > My 4Gb per month download limit doesn't like secret 10Gb downloads, that's what. So, for Windows 10, the 10Gb should likely be 10 GB? Right? For the 4Gb, that might be correct but then it is only about 0.5 GB. Yes, currently and at least back to IBM System/360, on systems from IBM, DEC VAX, Prime, Data General, Intel, and AMD, nearly always a byte has been 8 bits. Yes, the original ASCII character set needed only 7 bits; the DEC PDP 10 had 36 bit words, and DEC commonly stored 5 ASCII characters in each word. Communications speeds are commonly in terms of bits per second, and maybe communications data limits are also in terms of bits. File sizes are commonly in terms of bytes. So, maybe for communications, say Gb, and for file sizes, say GB. Giga abbreviates 1 billion or 2^30 = 1,073,741,824. Apparently some reader got totally torqued at me for trying to be nice. I was not asking for a tutorial on Gb versus GB but was trying nicely to suggest to the writer of the post I responded to that maybe they were not fully careful in using Gb versus GB. MOD: I'm being attacked for no good reason. Please intervene and clean up these attacks.
- Retric 10y ago
  > Yes, a byte is 8 bits Unless it's 7 bits aka ASCII 0 - 127. Some systems even used 6 bits and where case insensitive.
  - nowbacktowork 10y ago
    ascii is a representation of bits in the range you specified. It doesn't change the unit of measure byte and its value when converting to the bit unit of measure. Extended ascii uses the full 8 bits (unsigned) to value of 255 and values 0 through 31 are reserved for control codes.
    - Retric 10y ago
      No, byte simply meant the number of bits needed to represent a single character in a fixed width encoding. From Wikipedia: The byte (/ˈbaɪt/) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer[1][2] and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. PS: 16 bit bytes are now common with UTF-16 with fits a large chunk of Unicode. On the other hand UCS-2 is not a fixed width encoding so different rules apply. However, we stuck with 8 bit bytes for long enough it's become a viable alternative definition, until we byte the bullet and go back to a fixed 32 bit format.
- ramchip 10y ago
  > It seemed to me that their post needed to distinguish between Gb, gigabit, and GB, gigabyte. I disagree: the post makes perfect sense either way.

by y4mi 10y ago

graycat 10y ago

> G stands for giga, exactly 1000 units. Actually that is the meaning of K, as in Kb or KB. Giga is not for "1000 units" but for 1 bilion "units" or, for the power of 2 approximation 2^30 = 1,073,741,824. I was just trying to be nice to the person who wrote the post I responded to. It seemed to me that their post needed to distinguish between Gb, gigabit, and GB, gigabyte. Not strictly, of course, because in principle the post could have been correct with either Gb or GB. But usually communications speeds are in terms of bits, and file sizes in terms of bytes. So, monthly download limits are commonly in terms of bits or bytes -- i can't say. But the file sizes downloaded for Windows 10 are likely usually in terms of bytes. So, if Windows 10 needs 10 billion bytes, then that is 10 GB. Then that would need communications of about 80 Gb (less in case of data compression; more for overhead for TCP/IP, etc.). Or 10 Gb would be only 1.25 GB which seems small for copy or full update of Windows 10. So, net, I was guessing that the Windows 10 size would be about 10 GB, not 10 Gb. Then for the communications limit, that could be in Gb or GB. That is, I was responding to > My 4Gb per month download limit doesn't like secret 10Gb downloads, that's what. So, for Windows 10, the 10Gb should likely be 10 GB? Right? For the 4Gb, that might be correct but then it is only about 0.5 GB. Yes, currently and at least back to IBM System/360, on systems from IBM, DEC VAX, Prime, Data General, Intel, and AMD, nearly always a byte has been 8 bits. Yes, the original ASCII character set needed only 7 bits; the DEC PDP 10 had 36 bit words, and DEC commonly stored 5 ASCII characters in each word. Communications speeds are commonly in terms of bits per second, and maybe communications data limits are also in terms of bits. File sizes are commonly in terms of bytes. So, maybe for communications, say Gb, and for file sizes, say GB. Giga abbreviates 1 billion or 2^30 = 1,073,741,824. Apparently some reader got totally torqued at me for trying to be nice. I was not asking for a tutorial on Gb versus GB but was trying nicely to suggest to the writer of the post I responded to that maybe they were not fully careful in using Gb versus GB. MOD: I'm being attacked for no good reason. Please intervene and clean up these attacks.

Retric 10y ago
> Yes, a byte is 8 bits Unless it's 7 bits aka ASCII 0 - 127. Some systems even used 6 bits and where case insensitive.
- nowbacktowork 10y ago
  ascii is a representation of bits in the range you specified. It doesn't change the unit of measure byte and its value when converting to the bit unit of measure. Extended ascii uses the full 8 bits (unsigned) to value of 255 and values 0 through 31 are reserved for control codes.
  - Retric 10y ago
    No, byte simply meant the number of bits needed to represent a single character in a fixed width encoding. From Wikipedia: The byte (/ˈbaɪt/) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer[1][2] and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. PS: 16 bit bytes are now common with UTF-16 with fits a large chunk of Unicode. On the other hand UCS-2 is not a fixed width encoding so different rules apply. However, we stuck with 8 bit bytes for long enough it's become a viable alternative definition, until we byte the bullet and go back to a fixed 32 bit format.
ramchip 10y ago
> It seemed to me that their post needed to distinguish between Gb, gigabit, and GB, gigabyte. I disagree: the post makes perfect sense either way.