megas

Megas refers to the plural form of the metric prefix mega, used to denote a factor of one million in the International System of Units (SI). The prefix mega- is applied to numerous units, such as megawatt (MW), megabyte (MB), and megahertz (MHz). The symbol for the prefix is M, and the value is 10^6. The prefix derives from the Greek megas meaning “great” and was adopted into SI in 1960 as part of the system of prefixes for powers of ten.

Megas is not a separate unit; rather, it is informal, colloquial usage to refer to quantities expressed with the mega prefix. In formal writing, the units themselves are named (for example, 5 megabytes, 2 megahertz). In everyday speech or media reporting, people may say “megas” to mean megabytes or megabits per second, as in “download speeds are in the tens of megas.” The usage is nonstandard and can be ambiguous, especially for audiences unfamiliar with the context.

The mega prefix sits between kilo (10^3) and giga (10^9) in the SI scale. For data storage, the decimal meaning (10^6 bytes per megabyte) is standard in SI, but binary interpretations in computing have led to separate units such as mebibyte (MiB) for 2^20 bytes to avoid confusion.

See also: SI prefixes, megabyte, megabit, mebibyte, data size.