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.

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 link

NIST Prefixes for binary multiples (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html)