Units for measuring the amount of information. How many megabytes are in a gigabyte, bits in a byte (or kilobyte) and what is it in general for units of measurement of information How much does 1 GB weigh in MB
Many people know about the theory according to which the human soul is an almost material substance, and even has a certain mass, which allows it to be weighed on the most ordinary scales. However, this theory has enough opponents, and their counterarguments are quite weighty. In this regard, the conclusions of a scientist from Oxford - Mr. Vaster, who suggested that if the soul exists on a subtle material plane, then it is primarily information, or rather, a kind of information clot, are curious. At the same time, quite naturally, the question arose before him: does any weight information by her own.
Vaster's research turned out to be elementary, but quite witty and, no doubt, if desired, repeatable by anyone. The scientist checked freshly bought blank DVDs on high-precision scales, after which he recorded on them information and checked again. Unbelievable, but after recording information the same DVDs now weigh more! There was a problem: information is applied to the disk using a laser that burns holes on the metal layer, which leads to oxidation and a change in its mass. The scientist had to experiment with other drives information- hard drives, which, by the amount of data they can hold, are many times ahead of any other devices. It turns out that after writing the change in weight they will be even clearer and more noticeable. The assumption was confirmed! In addition, when all data was deleted from the disk, its mass returned to its original state. Flash drives were chosen next for unusual experiments, which had the final say: information does have a certain (albeit very small) weight. After reviewing the results of the research, Vaster calculated that on weight of information does not affect the type of media and it is 1x10 -10 grams per 1GB of binary data.
This led to one extremely serious conclusion. Based on the world-famous formula of Albert Einstein E = mc2, it is simply obvious that the broadcast information energy goes out, the size of which will vary depending on the amount information. If there is not a lot of data (up to several hundred Kb, as in telegraph communication or talking on a walkie-talkie), very little energy will be required. A television image requires much more noticeable energy investments, which is why such a signal is broadcast over relatively short distances. The range of high-quality reception even from powerful television stations is usually no higher than 80 km, despite the fact that, for example, the coverage of the Ostankino tower should be 200 km, especially if there is a well-installed receiving antenna. Broadcast information to (and from) rockets and space stations it is no longer possible without the most complex and huge antennas with very sensitive amplifiers - both astronauts and their earthly colleagues receive a low signal level to such an extent.
Information, broadcast by transmitters located near such distant planets as Uranus or Saturn, requires colossal deep-space antenna installations with the rarest cryogenic amplifiers to receive. Simply put, an optical or electrical signal that does not carry any information, is one thing, while a signal carrying information is something completely different. As the amount transmitted to them increases information its specific weight and, consequently, energy costs will increase. This discovery easily explains the "paradox of silence": assuming the possibility of the existence of many thousands of other intelligent civilizations in the Universe, we are not able to receive the signals transmitted by them into space due to the fact that the latter have their own specific weight. Broadcast transmission is a kind of informational shell. Depending on the distance that he must overcome without hindrance, he needs a certain energy potential. To information flew to us from another galaxy, we need a truly fantastic power.
Turning again to Einstein's E=mc2, it is easy to realize: with a lack of energy - E, the more significant weight of information- m, the weaker the speed of signal propagation - c. Another point that follows from this: if information has specific weighing, which means that it can resist any other information, slowing down and weakening it.
Let's look at this example: if you fire a shot from a gun or a pistol in a vacuum (say, on the moon), a flying bullet will not slow down during its flight. On our planet, it will be stopped by air, which is why in practice the range of the shot is always lower than the theoretical one. However, our Earth is girded, in addition to the air shell, also informational: thousands of TV towers, cell phones and other wireless devices spread gigabytes and terabytes of all kinds in all directions information. Therefore, any informational the signal is buried in it, as a result, we need very high-quality and sensitive transceiver equipment. If the broadcast is conducted from space, millions of thousands of kilometers away from us, then such information has no chance of getting through the earth informational pillow.
We also want to bring one more hypothesis made by Mr. Vaster. He believes that if at the moment of death the material shell of a person actually loses at least a gram of mass precisely due to the exit of the soul from it (and according to separate statements weight body is reduced by as much as 30 g), then the soul has informational with a capacity of approximately one billion GB. It turns out that even with the amazing current pace of development of computer technology, the emergence of a full-fledged artificial intelligence that could compare with human consciousness will most likely never happen. Even the most complex programs today rarely "weigh" more than 10 GB, and this is millions of times less than the theoretical one. informational"volume" of the soul. Moreover, it is unlikely that people will be able to invent a machine with enough processing power to run such a “program” on it. Perhaps this is a Divine ban on the development of artificial intelligence ...
We live in a world where almost everything is measured. Measured weight, length, height. And many other things. And today, in this article, we will get acquainted with the unit of measurement of information, we will find out what is more than 1kb or 1Mb. And how many MB in 1 GB.
How to measure data?
In the beginning was the word. No, I'm sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings, but we're talking about computer science. And that means - in the beginning there was a "Beat". A bit is the smallest piece of information. It can only have two values. 0 or 1. Yes or no. To be or not to be. Likes or not. So as you can see, even one bit can be a very important unit.
What is more - 1kb or 1mb?
We have been used to it since childhood. 1 kilo means 1000. For example, one kilogram is equal to one thousand grams. There is another word - mega. From mathematics, it means a number consisting of a million particles, or more simply, from 1000 kilos. Well, giga means 1000 mega. That is, it is clear that 1 MB (megabyte) will be more than 1Kb (kilobyte). But how much? A thousand times? You are sure? Let's take a look at the drawing.
We see an interesting picture. Here is information about the flash drive. And what do we see?
Free space 6 488 064 bytes. A megabyte is 6.18 mb. If you suddenly thought that my computer is driving, you can check it for yourself. Why? Read on.
How many MB in 1 GB
We already see that 1 megabyte is NOT equal to 1000 bytes. And here's what the table will look like.
- 1 kbyte = 1024 bytes
- 1 MB = 1,024 KB = 1,048,576 bytes
- 1 GB = 1,024 MB = 1,073,741,824 bytes
It might be interesting to know why. This is because of the peculiarities of the binary system in which all computers operate, and so on.
The fact is that the digits in the usual decimal system for us look like this.
1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000 and so on.
But in the binary system, it's different.
2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024.
Thus, in decimal, 1 kilo is equal to ten to the third power, or simply 1000. In binary, 2 to the tenth power = 1024. And since these numbers are almost equal, they were given the same prefix. But remember, when measuring kilograms, 1 kilogram is equal to 1000 grams, but when measuring bytes, 1kbyte is equal to 1024 bytes.
If you are interested in how many megabytes are in one gigabyte, see the table below. Next, we will discuss how these units of measurement are formed, and on what basis it is necessary to translate the conversion.
Information is data in various forms that can be perceived by people or special devices as a reflection of the material world that occurs in the process of communication. For many, it will be strange that information can be measured. Indeed, this is how we will try to figure out how bits differ from bytes and what is generally what.
The first thing to say is that for the most part people use the decimal system, which has been familiar since school. But in the case of information, a binary system will be used, which is represented as 0 and 1. Most often, this mechanism is used precisely in working with computer technology, as a rule, we are talking about the amount of hard drives or RAM.
Why is the actual and advertised capacity of hard drives different?
Many hard drive manufacturers often use this confusion. The declared capacity of the hard drive that the user purchased is, say, 500 gigabytes. But in fact, when it has already been installed and prepared for work, it turns out that its total volume fluctuates in the range of 450-460 gigabytes.
And the trick is that, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, the amount of RAM, like all its other types, uses a binary calculation system. And manufacturers use decimal. This gives them the opportunity to allegedly "increase" the memory, somewhere by 10 percent. Although in fact, buyers are simply misled.
Let's talk about number systems
The smallest unit of information will be a bit, which is the amount of information contained in a message, halving the uncertainty of knowledge about any subject. It is followed by a byte, which is considered the main unit of measure. By the way, it should be noted here that the speed of information transfer is measured in bits. We are talking about kilobits, megabits and so on. Many, by the way, confuse megabits and megabytes. Contrary to popular belief, these are completely different concepts and meanings. The speed will be measured exactly in bits transmitted per second, but not in bytes.
The binary system of calculation, as already mentioned above, is presented in the form of zeros and ones. A piece of information is a bit and can take the value of either zero or one and nothing else. That's what the beat will be. A byte, again, as mentioned, will consist of eight bits, if we talk specifically about the binary number system. Moreover, each will be written as 2 to a certain extent from 0 to 7. If you try to show it easier, then it will look like: 11101001.
This is a clear example of 256 combinations, which are encoded in a byte. But for users it is difficult, because they are used to seeing everything through the prism of the decimal system. So let's translate this, for which you just need to add all the powers of two where we have units. To do this, we need to take 2 to the power of 0 + 2 to the power of 3 + 2 to the power of 5 + 2 to the power of 6 + 2 to the power of 7.
Another important point is the nibble, or as it is called nibble. This is half a byte, that is, 4 bits. As a rule, any number from 0 to 15 can be encoded in it.
Mismatches in bits and bytes
As mentioned above, the information transfer rate is measured in bits. But recently, even in well-known programs, measurement is carried out in bytes. Although this is not entirely true, it is still possible. The translation in this case will be quite simple:
- 1 byte = 8 bits;
- 1 kilobyte = 8 kilobits;
- 1 megabyte = 8 megabits.
If the user needs to make a reverse translation, then you just need to divide the desired number by 8.
Another problem will be that the byte system itself has a number of inconsistencies that cause users problems with transfers to mega, giga, terabytes, and so on. The point here is that from the very beginning of its appearance, in order to designate units of information that are larger than bytes, terms are used that refer to the decimal system, and not to binary. For example, the prefix "tera" means multiplying by 10 to the power of 12, giga - by 10 to 9, mega - by 10 to 6, and so on.
It is for this reason that confusion arises. It would be logical to assume that 1 kilobyte is equal to 1000 bytes, but this is not so. It will have 1024 bytes.
In general, as you can see, there are certain difficulties, but if you understand them, it will quickly become clear that there is nothing difficult in this.
Analyzing the requests of visitors to our site, I see regular visits for queries like “500 MB is how much?”, “Is 1 GB of the Internet a lot or a little?” or “how much Internet traffic do you need for a smartphone per month”? Understanding what users want to find out - which Internet package they need to connect for their phone, tablet or USB modem for a computer, for example, in the country, I will try to give them general recommendations.
First of all, in 1 MB (megabyte) - 1024 KB (kilobyte), and in 1 GB (gigabyte) - 1024 MB. Accordingly, an Internet package of 500 MB is conditionally 0.5 GB, but to be exact, a little less.
What now "weighs" how much?
1 site page. This concept is flexible. If you go to a simple text page (for example, the main page of the Mobile Networks website), then it will “eat” you only about 60 KB of traffic. If the page contains photos and other graphic elements, then everything depends on their number. If we average it, then the page of the article with illustrations "weighs" usually 200-400 Kb. If you opened, for example, a large review of a smartphone, then we can already talk about several megabytes! In total, just reading the news, you will spend about 200 KB per page load. Mobile versions of sites may consume less, but to be honest, I don't like them.
1 music video. It all depends on the size of the audio clip (let's talk about the mp3 format) - its length, and quality (bitrate). Again, if you average, then count on 3-5 MB per listening or download.
1 movie. The size of a full-fledged 1.5-hour movie is very different from its quality (RIP, DVD, etc.) and compression ratio. If the traffic is limited or there are problems with speed, it is better to look for 700 MB movies as a DVDRIP or other RIP. There are still quite a few films of this size, and most of them are quite decent quality. For viewing on a laptop or tablet computer, that's it. A lot more movies come in 1.4 GB. Many of them visually differ little or not at all from their 700 MB counterparts, it all depends on the conscientiousness of their conversion and compression. If you have a lot of Internet, 3G or 4G (LTE) speed allows, you are critical of quality, want to enjoy multi-channel sound and have a huge high-resolution screen, then you can download DVD-quality movies that already “weigh” 5- 10-15 GB and more.
Streaming video. If you are going to watch online movies (and the speed allows you), for example, from ivi.ru, then keep in mind that even though they have the maximum compression ratio there (some services allow you to change it - quality settings), you still watch the movie will reduce your traffic by an average of 700 megabytes. With online TV - the same. A video session via Skype is similar, although much depends on the resolution of the webcam. But a few megabytes per minute may well go away.
IP telephony. Traffic for a conversation over IP (similarly for Skype) will go at about 128 kb / minute. Maybe more. But "for 5 MB" you can communicate quite well. This is for audio only, not video.
All sorts of little things. Checking mail, ICQ, Skype correspondence, social networks (Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter). You don’t need a lot of Internet here, unless, of course, “heavy” attachments are regularly sent to you by mail and you are not a very active social network user who presses the F5 key every minute. By the way, the pages of social networks "weigh" in the same way as others on average sites, but at the same time they regularly "self-update", monitoring new messages, which is your traffic.
Reminder for users of USB modems with limited traffic
If you have purchased a relatively small Internet package to use it in a stationary computer or laptop, using a cellular operator for the Internet, and a “whistle” as a modem, keep in mind that you will save a lot of traffic (so that later you don’t have to pay for all sorts of “turbo- button") can be disabled by disabling a wide variety of system updates for your programs, applications or operating system. And if I won’t advise you to disable antivirus updates, then at least temporarily it’s quite possible to refuse very voracious Windows updates. And they, at times, "eat up" your traffic many times more than you yourself, which may be an unpleasant surprise for you after just a few days.
How much internet do you need for a smartphone?
The smartphone lives its “smartphone life”, regularly visiting the Internet for updates in the background, checking your mail, synchronizing, etc. It does not matter on which platform it works - Android, Windows Phone, iOs (iPhone), or even the ancient OS Symbian or Bada. Therefore, it is quite normal to spend 50 MB per day on his affairs. And this is 1.5 GB. per month! Of course, they can be reduced to 1 GB or less by turning off updates to various programs or turning off the Internet itself for long periods of time, but then the question arises - why do you need a smartphone? As a result, know that if the operator happily informs you about an Internet package of 500 MB (about 0.5 GB) as part of the tariff, with the full use of the device (along with browsing, WhatsApp, social networks, correspondence in messengers, etc.) you this may not be enough even for half a month. Package 1 GB - with a stretch. Optimal - about 1.5 GB, and even better "BIT" or "Super BIT" (the names of unlimited options for MTS, for other operators they may differ). Although the latter are considered unlimited options, they have a certain daily traffic quota without speed limits, after which it drops significantly. But, in general, enough for a smartphone. At the same time, "Super BIT" differs from "BIT" in that it works not only in the "home region", but throughout Russia. Otherwise, outside the "home region" you will find roaming with the appropriate rates.
To measure length, there are such units as millimeter, centimeter, meter, kilometer. It is known that mass is measured in grams, kilograms, centners and tons. Time running is expressed in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, centuries. The computer works with information and there are also appropriate units of measurement for measuring its volume.
We already know that a computer perceives all information.
Bit- this is the minimum unit of measurement of information, corresponding to one binary digit ("0" or "1").
Byte consists of eight bits. Using one byte, you can encode one character out of 256 possible (256 = 2 8). Thus, one byte is equal to one character, that is, 8 bits:
1 character = 8 bits = 1 byte.
Letter, number, punctuation mark are symbols. One letter, one symbol. One number is also one character. One punctuation mark (either a period, or a comma, or a question mark, etc.) is again one character. One space is also one character.
The study of computer literacy involves the consideration of other, larger units of information measurement.
Byte table:
1 byte = 8 bits
1 Kb (1 Kilobyte) = 2 10 bytes = 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2 bytes =
= 1024 bytes (approximately 1 thousand bytes - 10 3 bytes)
1 MB (1 Megabyte) = 2 20 bytes = 1024 kilobytes (approximately 1 million bytes - 10 6 bytes)
1 GB (1 gigabyte) = 2 30 bytes = 1024 megabytes (approximately 1 billion bytes - 10 9 bytes)
1 TB (1 Terabyte) = 240 bytes = 1024 gigabytes (approximately 1012 bytes). Terabyte is sometimes called ton.
1 Pb (1 Petabyte) = 2 50 bytes = 1024 terabytes (approximately 10 15 bytes).
1 exabyte= 260 bytes = 1024 petabytes (approximately 1018 bytes).
1 Zettabyte= 270 bytes = 1024 exabytes (approximately 1021 bytes).
1 Yottabyte= 2 80 bytes = 1024 zettabytes (approximately 10 24 bytes).
In the table above, powers of two (2 10 , 2 20 , 2 30 , etc.) are the exact values of kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes. But the powers of the number 10 (more precisely, 10 3 , 10 6 , 10 9 , etc.) will already be approximate values, rounded down. Thus, 2 10 = 1024 bytes represents the exact value of a kilobyte, and 10 3 = 1000 bytes is the approximate value of a kilobyte.
Such an approximation (or rounding) is quite acceptable and generally accepted.
The following is a byte table with English abbreviations (in the left column):
1 Kb ~ 10 3 b = 10*10*10 b= 1000 b – kilobyte
1 Mb ~ 10 6 b = 10*10*10*10*10*10 b = 1 000 000 b - megabyte
1 Gb ~ 10 9 b - gigabyte
1 Tb ~ 10 12 b - terabyte
1 Pb ~ 10 15 b - petabyte
1 Eb ~ 10 18 b - exabyte
1 Zb ~ 10 21 b - zettabyte
1 Yb ~ 10 24 b - yottabyte
Above in the right column are the so-called "decimal prefixes", which are used not only with bytes, but also in other areas of human activity. For example, the prefix "kilo" in the word "kilobyte" means a thousand bytes, just as in the case of a kilometer it corresponds to a thousand meters, and in the example of a kilogram it is equal to a thousand grams.
To be continued…
The question arises: does the byte table have a continuation? In mathematics, there is the concept of infinity, which is denoted as an inverted eight: ∞.
It is clear that in the byte table you can continue to add zeros, or rather, powers to the number 10 in this way: 10 27 , 10 30 , 10 33 and so on ad infinitum. But why is this necessary? In principle, while terabytes and petabytes are enough. In the future, perhaps even a yottabyte will not be enough.
Finally, a couple of examples on devices that can store terabytes and gigabytes of information.
There is a convenient "terabyte" - an external hard drive that connects via USB to a computer. It can store a terabyte of information. It is especially convenient for laptops (where changing the hard drive can be problematic) and for backing up information. It is better to make backup copies of information in advance, and not after everything is gone.
Flash drives come in 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB and even 1 terabyte.
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