1048576byte

1048576 bytes represents a data size equal to 2^20 bytes. It is exactly 1,048,576 bytes, and is widely recognized as one mebibyte (MiB). The mebibyte is part of the IEC binary prefixes, which were designed to distinguish powers of two from decimal powers of ten. By definition, 1 MiB = 1,024 KiB = 1,048,576 bytes.

In contrast, the decimal megabyte (MB) equals 1,000,000 bytes. Because older software and hardware commonly used MB to denote 2^20 bytes, the terms MB and MiB can be ambiguous in practice. Modern systems and standards typically use MiB when precise binary measurement is required, while MB may appear in contexts like hard drive marketing, where decimal values are common.

Commonly, 1048576 bytes can be expressed as 1 MiB or 1,024 KiB. This unit is frequently encountered in computing memory specifications, cache sizes, software buffers, and sometimes in file size reporting, depending on the software’s chosen unit convention.

See also KiB, MiB, MB, TiB, Kibibyte, Tebibyte.