| Exbibits per second (Eibit/s) | Exbioctets per second (Eio/s) |
|---|---|
| 1 Exbibit per second | 0.125 Eio/s |
| 2 Exbibits per second | 0.25 Eio/s |
| 3 Exbibits per second | 0.375 Eio/s |
| 4 Exbibits per second | 0.5 Eio/s |
| 5 Exbibits per second | 0.625 Eio/s |
| 10 Exbibits per second | 1.25 Eio/s |
| 20 Exbibits per second | 2.5 Eio/s |
| 25 Exbibits per second | 3.125 Eio/s |
| 50 Exbibits per second | 6.25 Eio/s |
| 100 Exbibits per second | 12.5 Eio/s |
| Reference | Exbibits per second (Eibit/s) | Exbioctets per second (Eio/s) |
|---|---|---|
| A dial-up modem | 4.85723 × 10-14 Eibit/s | 6.07153 × 10-15 Eio/s |
| Typical home broadband | 8.67362 × 10-11 Eibit/s | 1.0842 × 10-11 Eio/s |
| Gigabit Ethernet | 8.67362 × 10-10 Eibit/s | 1.0842 × 10-10 Eio/s |
| Streaming a 4K film | 2.1684 × 10-11 Eibit/s | 2.71051 × 10-12 Eio/s |
The exbibit per second is a unit of data transfer rate equal to two to the sixtieth power bits per second, which is 1,024 pebibits per second. Its symbol is Eibit/s. It is the binary counterpart of the exabit per second, and the two differ by 15.3 per cent.
That fifteen per cent is more than the margin most engineering work allows anywhere. A quantity stated in the wrong convention at this level is not slightly imprecise but plainly wrong, and no amount of context recovers the intended figure once it has been written ambiguously. This is the situation the IEC prefixes were introduced to prevent.
No physical link approaches this rate. The unit describes aggregates: the total instantaneous traffic of the whole internet is roughly an exabit per second, so a binary exbibit per second is fifteen per cent more than everything moving on every network on the planet at a given moment.
Where a binary figure of this size arises naturally is in address arithmetic rather than in transmission. Two to the sixtieth is a number that appears throughout the design of 64-bit systems, and any rate derived from filling or traversing such an address space in a fixed time is naturally binary. Those calculations are theoretical, but they are the reason the unit is defined rather than left unnamed.
In octets an exbibit per second is 144,115,188,075,855,872, or 128 pebioctets per second. That is more storage moved per second than the world manufactures in several years, which is a way of saying that no source and no destination for such a flow could exist.
For a converter the treatment is mechanical and must be exact. Eibit/s and Ebit/s differ by an eighth, and a tool that treats them as interchangeable has introduced an error larger than the difference between many neighbouring units. The lowercase i is not decoration.
One exbibit per second equals 1,024 pebibits per second, 144,115,188,075,855,872 octets per second, or about 1.153 exabits per second.
The exbioctet per second is a unit of data transfer rate equal to 1,024 pebioctets per second, or two to the sixtieth power octets per second. Its symbol is Eio/s. It is the binary counterpart of the exaoctet per second, and the two differ by 15.3 per cent.
No machine, network or aggregate reaches this rate. An exbioctet per second is more than eight times the total instantaneous traffic of the entire internet, and it would move the world's whole stock of stored data in a matter of minutes. The unit describes a capacity with no source that could supply it and no destination that could take it in.
Two to the sixtieth is nevertheless a familiar number in computing, because it is the size of the address space a 64-bit machine can reach in octets divided by sixteen. The same power of two turns up in filesystem limits, in memory maps and in the design of every system built on that architecture, so the quantity is well known even though no rate approaches it.
The unit exists because the IEC series was defined completely. Every binary prefix pairs with every unit, exactly as every metric prefix does, so that a reader who has never seen Eio/s can decode it from the prefix alone. A system with gaps would need a table of permitted combinations, which is precisely what a rule-based system exists to avoid.
The difference from the decimal unit is worth restating at each level because it compounds. At the kibioctet it was 2.4 per cent, here it is more than an eighth, and at the yobioctet it will be more than a fifth. That growth is the reason the binary prefixes were created, and it is why the lowercase i has to be written even in figures nobody will check.
For a converter, the treatment is mechanical: six multiplications by 1,024 from octets, or the equivalent divisions coming down. The value of doing it correctly is not that anyone will use the result, but that a tool which handles every case the same way can be trusted on the cases that matter.
One exbioctet per second equals 1,024 pebioctets per second, 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 octets per second, or about 1.153 exaoctets per second.