Mebibyte (MiB)
The mebibyte, symbol MiB, equals 1,048,576 bytes (1,024 KiB) and was introduced by the IEC in 1998 to eliminate ambiguity between MB (decimal) and MiB (binary). It is commonly used in operating systems, memory specifications, and technical documentation where exact binary measurement is required. Mebibytes provide clarity and consistency, especially in software development and systems engineering, ensuring accurate memory allocation, storage calculations, and file size reporting.
Gigabyte (GB)
The gigabyte, symbol GB, represents 1,000,000,000 bytes in decimal, though in binary it is often approximated as 1,073,741,824 bytes (1,024 MiB). The unit was introduced in the 1980s as personal computers and hard drives increased capacity. Gigabytes measure larger data volumes, including software, multimedia, and storage devices, and became the standard for consumer storage, networking, and cloud computing as a scale between megabytes and terabytes.