Mebibyte

MiB redirects here. For other things abbreviating to MiB or MIB, see MIB.

Multiple-byte units
Decimal Value Metric 1000 kB kilobyte 10002 MB megabyte 10003 GB gigabyte 10004 TB terabyte 10005 PB petabyte 10006 EB exabyte 10007 ZB zettabyte 10008 YB yottabyte 10009 RB ronnabyte 100010 QB quettabyte	Binary Value IEC Memory 1024 KiB kibibyte KB kilobyte 10242 MiB mebibyte MB megabyte 10243 GiB gibibyte GB gigabyte 10244 TiB tebibyte TB terabyte 10245 PiB pebibyte — 10246 EiB exbibyte — 10247 ZiB zebibyte — 10248 YiB yobibyte — 10249 RiB robibyte — 102410 QiB quebibyte —
Orders of magnitude of data

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 usage of the terms is slowly becoming more common.

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

Mibibyte is a common misspelling, presumably from the "i" in the abbreviation or confusion about how the surrounding prefixes (i.e. "kibi" and "gibi") were actually formed. 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

• megabyte
• mebibit
• binary prefix
• orders of magnitude (data)

External links

• NIST Prefixes for binary multiples