A megabyte (MB) is a unit of digital information storage or data size that represents roughly one million bytes. It’s used to quantify the amount of data in various digital contexts, such as computer storage, file sizes, memory capacity, or data transmission rates.
In the International System of Units (SI), a megabyte is officially defined as 1,000,000 bytes. However, in the context of computers and digital storage, it is often used informally to represent 1,048,576 bytes, which is 2^20 (2 raised to the power of 20) bytes. This larger value is commonly referred to as a “binary megabyte” or “mebibyte (MiB)” in order to distinguish it from the SI definition.
The discrepancy in definition arises from the difference between the decimal system (base 10) used in the SI standard and the binary system (base 2) employed in computing, where data storage is based on powers of 2.