Pebibyte

Pebibyte (PiB) is a unit of digital information storage defined by the IEC as part of the binary prefix set. It denotes 2^50 bytes, equal to 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes. The name combines the prefix pebi- (derived from peta, with binary meaning) with the byte unit, and it belongs to a sequence that also includes kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte, and exbibyte.

Equivalents and relationships: 1 PiB = 1024 TiB = 1,048,576 GiB = 1,099,511,627,776 KiB. In decimal terms, 1 PiB is about 1.1259 × 10^15 bytes, i.e., roughly 1.126 petabytes (PB). The distinction between PiB and PB is that PiB uses powers of 1024, while PB uses powers of 1000.

Usage and context: PiB is used primarily in computing contexts where binary multiples are standard, such as memory capacities and large-scale storage systems. In consumer marketing, decimal prefixes such as PB and TB are more common, which can lead to confusion between binary and decimal measures. The IEC prefixes were introduced to reduce this ambiguity.

See also: kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte, exbibyte, as well as petabyte for comparison with decimal storage units.