Exbibytes to Bytes (EiB to B)

1 exbibyte equals 1.152921505×10¹⁸ bytes (rounded).

How to convert exbibytes to bytes

To convert exbibytes to bytes, multiply the number of exbibytes by 1.152921505×10¹⁸. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply bytes by 8.67361738×10⁻¹⁹ (rounded).

bytes = exbibytes × 1.152921505×10¹⁸

Example: 10 exbibytes = 1.152921505×10¹⁹ bytes.

Decimal prefixes (kB, MB, GB) are powers of 1,000; binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) are powers of 1,024. Storage makers use decimal; Windows reports binary but labels it GB.

About these units

Exbibyte (EiB)

ComputingCurrent unit

Exactly 2⁶⁰ bytes (about 1.153 exabytes).

Exbi joins the first two letters of exa to bi, for binary, and was published by the IEC in January 1999 with pebi. An exbibyte (EiB) is exactly 2^60 bytes, which is 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes, or 1,024 pebibytes. NIST's page on binary prefixes lists it as the largest of the six original binary multiples.

The decimal exabyte is 10^18 bytes, so the exbibyte is about 15.3 percent larger. A useful landmark is the address space of a 64-bit machine, which can in principle reach 2^64 distinct byte addresses, or 16 exbibytes, a figure that has no neat decimal equivalent.

Real systems seldom approach this size, so the unit appears mostly in discussions of addressing and capacity limits. Like the other IEC names, it states plainly that the count is binary.

1 exbibyte = 1.152921505×10¹⁸ bytes (approximately).

Sources: NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; Wikipedia: Byte

Byte (B)

ComputingCurrent unit

Eight bits. The basic addressable unit of memory and storage.

Werner Buchholz coined the word byte in June 1956 while working on the IBM Stretch computer; the earliest supporting document is dated 11 June 1956. He respelled bite on purpose, in his words to avoid accidental mutation to bit. At that stage a byte was any group of one to six bits, and a move to eight bits was considered in August 1956 and built into the design soon after. Louis Dooley later claimed he had coined the term around 1956 or 1957 on the SAGE project at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where it meant groups of four bits, but Fred Brooks credited Buchholz.

IBM's System/360 adopted the eight-bit byte, and its success made that size the standard. The symbol is a capital B, and the unambiguous alternative is octet, a word used in protocol standards such as RFC 791. A byte can hold 256 distinct values, enough for a letter of the alphabet in a simple character set, which is why files and memory addresses are counted in bytes.

The byte is the reference unit for digital storage on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Byte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.