Gigabyte

The gigabyte (/ˈdʒɪɡəbaɪt/) is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix giga means 10⁹ in the International System of Units (SI), therefore one gigabyte is 1000000000bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB.

This definition is used in all contexts of science, engineering, business, and many areas of computing, including hard drive, solid state drive, and tape capacities, as well as data transmission speeds. However, the term is also used in some fields of computer science and information technology to denote 1073741824 (1024³ or 2³⁰) bytes, particularly for sizes of RAM. The use of gigabyte is thus ambiguous. For semiconductor RAM, the gigabyte denotes 1073741824bytes. For hard drive capacities as described and marketed by the drive manufacturers, the gigabyte denotes 1000000000bytes, but when a 500-GB drive's capacity is displayed by, for example, Microsoft Windows, it is reported as 465 GB, where GB then means 1073741824bytes.

To address this ambiguity, the binary prefixes are standardized in the International System of Quantities, each binary prefix denoting an integer power of 1024. With these prefixes, a memory module that is labeled as having the size 1GB is designated as 1GiB (one gibibyte).

Gigabyte Technology

Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 技嘉科技; pinyin: Jìjiā Kējì), is an international manufacturer and distributor of computer hardware products.

Gigabyte is a motherboard vendor, with shipments of 4.8 million motherboards in Q1 2015, while ASUS shipped around 4.5 million motherboards in the same quarter. Gigabyte was ranked 17th in "Taiwan's 2010 Top 20 Global Brands" by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council.

The company is publicly held and traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, stock id number TWSE: 2376.

History

Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. was established in 1986 by Pei-Cheng Yeh. Gigabyte's components are used in Alienware, Falcon Northwest, and Origin PC.

A key feature of the of Gigabyte dating back to 2006 were its Ultra-Durable motherboards, which were unique for their design as having "All Solid Capacitors". On 8 August 2006 Gigabyte announced a joint venture with ASUS. Gigabyte developed the world's first software-controlled power supply in July 2007.

An innovative method to charge the iPad and iPhone on the computer was introduced by Gigabyte in April 2010. Gigabyte launched the world’s first Z68 motherboard on 31 May 2011, with Onboard mSATA for Intel® SSDs and Smart Response Technology. On 2 April 2012, Gigabyte developed the world's first motherboard with 60A ICs from International Rectifier.

Gigabyte (virus writer)

Kimberley Vanvaeck, also known as her online name Gigabyte, is virus writer from Belgium known for a long-standing dispute which involved the internet security firm Sophos and one of its employees, Graham Cluley. Vanvaeck wrote several viruses, including Quis, Coconut, Sahay, and YahaSux. She also created a Sharp virus (also called "Sharpei"), credited as being the first virus to be written in C Sharp.

Vanvaeck's dispute with Cluley began after he made several comments concerning the gender of virus writers. This prompted Vanvaeck to write several viruses that specifically targeted Cluley which were stated to be written as proof-of-concept rather than releasing them in the wild.

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