512Mi

512Mi is the abbreviation for 512 mebibytes, a unit of digital information defined as 512 × 2^20 bytes, equal to 536,870,912 bytes. In binary terms, this equals 0.5 gibibytes (GiB). In decimal terms, 512Mi is about 0.537 gigabytes (GB).

Mebibyte is part of the IEC binary prefixes and is distinct from the megabyte (MB). One mebibyte equals 1,048,576 bytes, whereas one megabyte equals 1,000,000 bytes. The mebibyte uses powers of two, which leads to differences in size compared with decimal-based units.

Common usage: memory specifications in computing, especially in containerization and virtualization. In Kubernetes and Docker, limits and requests are often written with the Mi suffix, e.g., memory: 512Mi. System monitoring and reporting tools may display memory values in MiB, reflecting the binary basis of the unit.

Related units include the mebibyte (MiB) and the gibibyte (GiB), which together with the byte form the IEC binary prefixes for digital storage and memory. The distinctions between MiB, MB, and GiB are important for accurately sizing memory and interpreting capacity in different computing contexts.