Editing Gigabyte (section)

===Other contexts===
Because of their physical design, the capacity of modern computer random-access memory devices, such as [[DIMM]] modules, is always a multiple of a power of 1024. It is thus convenient to use prefixes denoting powers of 1024, known as [[binary prefixes]], in describing them. For example, a memory capacity of {{gaps|1|073|741|824|bytes}} (1024<sup>3</sup> B) is conveniently expressed as 1&nbsp;[[gibibyte|GiB]] rather than as 1.074&nbsp;GB. The former specification is, however, often quoted as "1&nbsp;GB" when applied to random-access memory.<ref name=TS-GiB>{{cite web|last1=Percival|first1=Colin|title=Why is 1 GB equal to 10^9 bytes instead of 2^30?|url=http://www.tarsnap.com/GB-why.html|publisher=tarsnap.com|access-date=1 November 2015}}</ref>

Software allocates memory in varying degrees of granularity as needed to fulfill data structure requirements and binary multiples are usually not required. Other computer capacities and rates, like [[Computer storage|storage]] hardware size, [[data transfer rates]], [[clock speed]]s, [[FLOPS|operations per second]], etc. are usually presented in decimal units. For example, the manufacturer of a "300&nbsp;GB" hard drive is claiming a capacity of {{gaps|300|000|000|000|bytes}}, not 300&nbsp;×&nbsp;1024<sup>3</sup> (which would be {{gaps|322|122|547|200}}) bytes.