Mebibyte

Defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in December 1998, a mebibyte (MiB) is a unit of information or computer storage. It is defined as

1 MiB = 2²⁰ bytes = 1 048 576 bytes

The mebibyte is closely related to the megabyte (MB), which can either be a synonym for mebibyte, or refer to 10⁶ bytes = 1 000 000 bytes, depending on context (see binary prefix). The two numbers are relatively close together, but mistaking the two has nevertheless occasionally led to problems.

Use of mebibyte and related units is strongly endorsed by IEEE and CIPM and is slowly coming into common usage.

One mebibyte equals 1024 (= 2¹⁰) kibibytes, and 1024 mebibytes equal one gibibyte.

Mibibyte is a common misspelling, presumably from the 'i' in the abbreviation. The 'i' is actually from the end of the prefix. Tebi- and pebi- are similarly abbreviated Ti- and Pi-, but they are not usually misspelled, as storage sizes (and corresponding terms) currently are only this large in specialized situations.

See also

• Binary prefix
• Mebibit
• Megabyte

External links

• NIST Prefixes for binary multiples