exabytes, zettabytes and yottabytes, oh my!

[Andy Carvin <acarvin@GLOBALSCHOOLHOUSE.COM>]

Hi everyone. In recent conversations with folks at several conferences, an
unanswered trivia question has come up repeatedly. With the continuous
advances in technology, we've seen bandwidth and data storage increase again
and again: from kilobytes to megabytes to gigabytes of disk space in today's
PCs, for example, or the gigabit speeds promised by Internet 2. Assuming
this pace continues, we'll have to have the language to describe these
increasing metrics. Many of us know that the prefix after giga is tera - in
other words, 1 gigabyte is over one billion bytes (1,000,000,000) and 1
terabyte is over one trillion bytes (1,000,000,000,000). (I say "over"
because a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes, but it's a heck of a lot easier
to remember the rounded approximate amounts without dwelling on this fact.)

But what comes after terabyte? (not that any of us should be expecting this
kind of bandwidth at home or school any time soon...)

Petabyte: over 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Exabyte: over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Zettabyte: over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Yottabyte: over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

To put some of these in perspective, here are some estimates I pulled off
Roy William's website at CalTech's Center for Advanced Computing Research:


1 Megabyte: A small novel OR A 3.5 inch floppy disk
5 Megabytes: The complete works of Shakespeare OR 30 seconds of TV-quality
video

1 Gigabyte: A pickup truck filled with paper OR A symphony in high-fidelity
sound OR A movie at TV quality
2 Gigabytes: 20 meters of shelved books OR A stack of 9-track tapes
20 Gigabytes: A good collection of the works of Beethoven

1 Terabyte: All the X-ray films in a large technological hospital OR 50,000
trees made into paper and printed

2 Terabytes: An academic research library
10 Terabytes: The printed collection of the US Library of Congress

1 Petabyte: 3 years of Earth Observing System satellite data (2001)
2 Petabytes: All US academic research libraries
200 Petabytes: All printed material

5 Exabytes: All words ever spoken by human beings.

And that's as far as his list goes. So what does that say for the gargantuan
size of zettabytes and yottabytes? A lottabytes, no doubt.



****************************************************
Andy Carvin                         Senior Associate
                               The Benton Foundation

andy@gsn.org               http://edweb.gsn.org/andy
andy@benton.org                http://www.benton.org
****************************************************
Come Visit The EdWeb Project at http://edweb.gsn.org
****************************************************

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
All postings to LM_NET are protected under copyright law.
To quit LM_NET (or set-reset NOMAIL or DIGEST), send email to:
listserv@listserv.syr.edu   In the message write EITHER:
1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL or 3) SET LM_NET DIGEST
4) SET LM_NET MAIL  * Please allow for confirmation from Listserv.
For LM_NET Help see: http://ericir.syr.edu/lm_net/
Archives: http://askeric.org/Virtual/Listserv_Archives/LM_NET.html
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=