Metric: Giga__ bigger than Milli___, Computer: Milli byte bigger than Gigabyte? Why?

Question

I may be confused here, but am trying to understand. In the metric system a milliliter will be smaller than a gigaliter. But in computer technology millibytes seem to be larger than gigabytes. Ram is always told in millibytes not gigabytes. Why?

Answer 1

No, not millibytes, megabytes!

In computer science, a byte is the smallest storage size and is 8 bits, 8 ones and zeroes.

1 byte (B) = 8 bits (b)
1 kilobyte (kB) = 1024 byte = 2^10 byte
1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 kB = 1048576 B = 2^20 byte
1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1024 MB = 1073741824 B = 2^30 byte
1 Terabyte (TB) = 1024 GB = 1099511627776 B = 2^40 byte

in common mathematics, it is just a little bit different (but almost the same):

nano = 0.00,000,000,1 = 10^-9
micro = 0.00,000,1 = 10^-6
milli = 0.00,1 = 10^-3
centi = 0.01 = 10^-2
deci = 0.1 = 10^-2
kilo = 1,000 = 10^3
Mega = 1,000,000 = 10^6
Giga = 1,000,000,000 = 10^9
Terra = 1,000,000,000,000 = 10^12

Answer 2

There is no such thing as a millibyte, it would be much smaller than a byte and a bit is the only thing smaller than a byte. RAM is always sold in MEGABYTES which is 1/1000 the size of a gigabyte.

Answer 3

Honey,
I guess you might have understand the concept wrongly. The real meaning of milli and Giga is:
Milli = 1/1000
Giga = 1000,000
So, Giga is alwasys Greater than milli,
irrespective of measurement system(meter, liter, Bytes)

i could order the memory size from Big to small amount as:
Gigabyte>Megabyte>kilobyte
>byte>millibyte.

And one more thing is Physical memory/RAM is the one which have very less amount of memory space than Hard disks. Noramally RAM would be in MBs(10 power 6) and HardDisks have GBs(10 power 9)

Answer 4

I have never heard about millibytes when it comes to computer technology. MB means megabyte, and a megabyte is 1000 times smaller than a gigabyte.

1 gigabyte = 1000 megabyte. 1 gigaliter = 1000 megaliter.

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix for a longer explanation about prefixes!

Answer 5

a gigabyte is always bigger than a millibyte. Its for the convenience of the user that the memory allocation is indicated in millibytes because its not everytime that we need to store data which will use a gigabyte for storage. A computer always looks to store data in minimum space in memory.

Answer 6

There is no term like milli byte. RAM is measured in mega byte or kilo byte.

In computer these are metrics

bit=1 or 0
8 bits=1 byte
1024 bytes=1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes=1 mega byte
1024 mega byte=1 giga byte
and goes on...

Answer 7

no one uses millibytes, it's Megabytes and Gigabyte is larger than Megabyte.

Answer 8

Well... I have to go with Obama. Milli Vanilli were harmless frauds, Obama will soon be in position to do great damage to our nation. He may not lipsync, but he IS a mouthpiece for George Soros.

Answer 9

milibytes is just a way to show big numbers but it is smaller

Answer 10

Because you are reading too much