Mebibyte (MiB)

ComputingCurrent unit

Exactly 1,048,576 bytes (2²⁰). The binary megabyte, about 4.9% larger than a decimal megabyte.

1 mebibyte = 1,048,576 bytes (exactly).

1 mebibyte = 1,048,576 bytes

About the mebibyte

Mebi, from mega with the binary i added, belongs to the same 1998 IEC family as kibi and gibi, which the IEC published as Amendment 2 to IEC 60027-2 in January 1999. NIST gives the factor as 2 to the twentieth, or 1,048,576 bytes. It was meant to settle a real argument: once storage makers and telecom engineers used decimal values and programmers used binary ones, megabyte came to mean different amounts.

A mebibyte is about 4.9 percent larger than a megabyte, and the standard is now IEC 80000-13. The classic example is the 1.44 MB floppy, whose true capacity is 1,440 KiB, which is 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB. Like other IEC symbols, MiB is rarely used outside tools such as KDE and Qt-based applications, while Windows and RAM labels use MB for the binary quantity.

Sources: NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Mebibyte

Mebibyte conversion chart

1 mebibyte expressed in every other digital storage unit:

Unit1 mebibyte
Bytes1,048,576
Kilobytes1,048.576
Megabytes1.048576
Gigabytes0.001048576
Terabytes0.000001048576
Bits8,388,608
Petabytes1.048576×10⁻⁹
Kibibytes1,024
Gibibytes0.0009765625
Tebibytes9.536743164×10⁻⁷
Kilobits8,388.608
Megabits8.388608
Gigabits0.008388608
Exabytes1.048576×10⁻¹²
Zettabytes1.048576×10⁻¹⁵
Yottabytes1.048576×10⁻¹⁸
Pebibytes9.313225746×10⁻¹⁰
Exbibytes9.094947018×10⁻¹³
Terabits0.000008388608
Kibibits8,192
Mebibits8
Gibibits0.0078125
Nibbles2,097,152

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