Convert Megabyte (MB) to Bit (b) instantly.
About these units
Megabyte (MB)
A megabyte is traditionally 1,048,576 bytes (2²⁰), though storage manufacturers sometimes use the decimal version of 1,000,000 bytes. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, megabytes represented substantial storage: early PCs had 256 kB or 512 kB of RAM, and hard drives with 10–40 MB were considered spacious. Software developers worked within tight memory budgets, optimizing every byte. Megabytes remain relevant today for file sizes such as images, audio files, small binaries, and executable programs. They mark a transitional era when computing moved from kilobytes to the far larger storage capacities we now expect.
Bit (b)
A bit is the most fundamental unit of digital information, representing a binary value of 0 or 1. In physical systems, a bit corresponds to two distinguishable states—such as high/low voltage, magnetic polarity, or light/dark in optical systems. Bits form the basis of all digital computation: CPUs manipulate bits through logic gates, memory stores bits in capacitors or magnetic cells, and communication networks transmit bits as electrical pulses or photons. Although extremely small in size, bits accumulate into vast structures—from kilobytes of text to petabytes of cloud storage. Every digital phenomenon—files, images, videos, software—ultimately reduces to sequences of bits. The bit is the "atom" of information.