Giga ( or ) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of a (short-form) billion (109 or 1000000000). It has the symbol G.
Giga is derived from the Greek word , meaning "giant." The Oxford English Dictionary reports the earliest written use of giga in this sense to be in the Reports of the IUPAC 14th Conference in 1947: "The following prefixes to abbreviations for the names of units should be used: G giga 109×."[1]
When referring to information units in computing, such as gigabyte, giga may sometimes mean 1073741824 (230), although such use is inconsistent, contrary to standards and has been discouraged by the standards organizations.[2][3] The inconsistency is that gigabit is never (or very rarely) used with the binary interpretation of the prefix, while gigabyte is sometimes used this way. The binary prefix gibi has been adopted for 230, while reserving giga exclusively for the metric definition.
Pronunciation
In English, the initial g of giga can be pronounced (a hard g as in giggle), or (a soft g as in giant, which shares giga Greek root).[4]
This latter pronunciation was formalised within the United States in the 1960s and 1980s with the issue by the US National Bureau of Standards of pronunciation guides for the metric prefixes.[5] A prominent example is found in the pronunciation of gigawatts in the 1985 film Back to the Future.
According to the American writer Kevin Self, a German committee member of the International Electrotechnical Commission proposed giga as a prefix for 109 in the 1920s, drawing on a verse (evidently "Anto-logie") by the German humorous poet Christian Morgenstern that appeared in the third (1908) edition of his Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs).[6][7] This suggests that a hard German [?] was originally intended as the pronunciation. Self was unable to ascertain when the /d?/ (soft g) pronunciation came into occasional use, but claimed that as of 1995 it had returned to /?/ (hard g).[8][9]
In 1998, a poll by the phonetician John C. Wells found that 84% of Britons preferred the pronunciation of gigabyte starting with // (as in gig), 9% with /d/ (as in jig), 6% with /?a?/ (guy), and 1% with /d?a?/ (as in giant).[10]
Common usage
- gigahertz--clock rate of a CPU, for instance, 3 GHz = 3000000000Hz
- gigabit--bandwidth of a network link, for instance, 1 Gbit/s = 1000000000bit/s.
- gigabyte--for instance, for hard disk capacity, 120 GB = 120000000000bytes;
- gigayear or gigaannum--one billion (109) years, sometimes abbreviated Gyr, but the preferred usage is Ga.
| Prefix | Base 1000 | Base 10 | Decimal | English word | Adoption[nb 1] | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Symbol | Short scale | Long scale | ||||
| yotta | Y | 10008 | 1024 | 1000000000000000000000000 | septillion | quadrillion | 1991 |
| zetta | Z | 10007 | 1021 | 1000000000000000000000 | sextillion | trilliard | 1991 |
| exa | E | 10006 | 1018 | 1000000000000000000 | quintillion | trillion | 1975 |
| peta | P | 10005 | 1015 | 1000000000000000 | quadrillion | billiard | 1975 |
| tera | T | 10004 | 1012 | 1000000000000 | trillion | billion | 1960 |
| giga | G | 10003 | 109 | 1000000000 | billion | milliard | 1960 |
| mega | M | 10002 | 106 | 1000000 | million | 1873 | |
| kilo | k | 10001 | 103 | 1000 | thousand | 1795 | |
| hecto | h | 10002/3 | 102 | 100 | hundred | 1795 | |
| deca | da | 10001/3 | 101 | 10 | ten | 1795 | |
| 10000 | 100 | 1 | one | - | |||
| deci | d | 1000-1/3 | 10-1 | 0.1 | tenth | 1795 | |
| centi | c | 1000-2/3 | 10-2 | 0.01 | hundredth | 1795 | |
| milli | m | 1000-1 | 10-3 | 0.001 | thousandth | 1795 | |
| micro | ? | 1000-2 | 10-6 | 0.000001 | millionth | 1873 | |
| nano | n | 1000-3 | 10-9 | 0.000000001 | billionth | milliardth | 1960 |
| pico | p | 1000-4 | 10-12 | 0.000000000001 | trillionth | billionth | 1960 |
| femto | f | 1000-5 | 10-15 | 0.000000000000001 | quadrillionth | billiardth | 1964 |
| atto | a | 1000-6 | 10-18 | 0.000000000000000001 | quintillionth | trillionth | 1964 |
| zepto | z | 1000-7 | 10-21 | 0.000000000000000000001 | sextillionth | trilliardth | 1991 |
| yocto | y | 1000-8 | 10-24 | 0.000000000000000000000001 | septillionth | quadrillionth | 1991 |
| |||||||
Binary prefix
The notation can represent 1,073,741,824 (230) bytes or 1,000,000,000 bytes. Under the IEC 60027-2 A.2 and ISO/IEC 80000 standards, the correct notation of 230 is gibi (symbol Gi). So, is 1,073,741,824 bytes or . Despite international standards, the use of = 230 B is widespread. A laptop advertised as having has 8,589,934,592 bytes of memory: , or .
See also
References
- ^ "giga-, comb. form". Oxford English Dictionary. October 2011.
- ^ "§3.1 SI prefixes". The International System of Units (SI) (PDF) (in French and English) (8th ed.). Paris: STEDI Media. 2006. p. 127. ISBN 92-822-2213-6. Retrieved .
[Side note:] These SI prefixes refer strictly to powers of 10. They should not be used to indicate powers of 2 (for example, one kilobit represents 1000 bits and not 1024 bits). The IEC has adopted prefixes for binary powers in the international standard IEC 60027-2: 2005, third edition, Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology -- Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics. The names and symbols for the prefixes corresponding to 210, 220, 230, 240, 250, and 260 are, respectively: kibi, Ki; mebi, Mi; gibi, Gi; tebi, Ti; pebi, Pi; and exbi, Ei. Thus, for example, one kibibyte would be written: 1 KiB = 210 B = 1024 B, where B denotes a byte. Although these prefixes are not part of the SI, they should be used in the field of information technology to avoid the incorrect usage of the SI prefixes.
- ^ NIST Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (Appendix D. ref 5)
- ^ "SI prefixes and their etymologies". US Metric Association. Retrieved 2019.
- ^ NBS Special Publication 304 & 304A, revised August 1981, "A Brief History of Measurement Systems"
- ^ Morgenstern, Christian (1917). Galgenlieder nebst dem 'Gingganz' (in German). Illustrated by Karl Walser (22 ed.). Berlin, Germany: Bruno Cassirer. p. 52 – via Project Gutenberg.
[First four lines:] Im Anfang lebte, wie bekannt, / als größter Säuger der Gig-ant. / Wobei gig eine Zahl ist, die / es nicht mehr gibt, - so groß war sie!
[These lines are the only appearance of gig in the book. Gigant is German for "giant"; cf. "gigantic".] - ^ Morgenstern, Christian (1963). Gallows Songs: Christian Morgenstern's "Galgenlieder", Bilingual Edition: A Selection. Translated by Knight, Max. University of California Press. pp. 24-25. ISBN 9780520008847. Retrieved 2016.
[Translation:] Of yore, on earth was dominant / the biggest mammal: the Gig-ant. / ("Gig" is a numeral so vast, / it's been extinct for ages past.)
- ^ Self, Kevin (October 1994). "Technically speaking". Spectrum. IEEE: 18.
- ^ Self, Kevin (April 1995). "Technically speaking". Spectrum. IEEE: 16.
- ^ Wells, J. C. (1998). LPD pronunciation preference poll 1998.
External links
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