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+<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
+ type="topic" style="task"
+ id="units">
+ <info>
+ <revision version="0.2" pkgversion="3.11" date="2014-01-26" status="review"/>
+ <link type="guide" xref="index#other" group="other" />
+
+ <include href="legal.xml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
+
+ <credit type="author copyright">
+ <name>Phil Bull</name>
+ <email>philbull@gmail.com</email>
+ <years>2011</years>
+ </credit>
+
+ <credit type="author copyright">
+ <name>Michael Hill</name>
+ <email>mdhillca@gmail.com</email>
+ <years>2011, 2014</years>
+ </credit>
+
+ <desc>Units of measure for memory and disk space</desc>
+ </info>
+
+ <title>Is GiB the same as GB (gigabyte)?</title>
+
+ <comment>
+ <cite date="2011-06-18" href="mailto:philbull@gmail.com">Phil Bull</cite>
+ <p>Answer this question, quite briefly.</p>
+ </comment>
+
+ <p>The memory and disk space statistics are displayed using <em>IEC binary
+ prefixes</em>, KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB (for kibi, mebi, gibi and tebi). These are
+ intended to distinguish binary reporting of sizes used in System Monitor
+ (multiples of 1024) from decimal sizes (multiples of 1000) commonly used, for
+ instance, in packaging of hard disks.</p>
+
+ <p>Typical binary units:</p>
+ <list>
+ <item><p>1 KiB = 1024 bytes</p></item>
+ <item><p>1 MiB = 1048576 bytes</p></item>
+ <item><p>1 GiB = 1073741842 bytes</p></item>
+ </list>
+
+ <p>An external hard drive, advertised as 1.0 TB (terabytes), would display
+ as 0.909 TiB (tebibytes).</p>
+
+</page>