The following units of measure are used to define digital capacities and speeds. The long scale below shows the powers of 10 in many European countries. For measurements of a meter, see metric system. See binary values, NIST binary and long scale.
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Long Scale
Bits/Bytes 10 to the |
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Kilo (K) Thousand 3 3
Mega (M) Million 6 6
Giga (G) Billion 9 12
Tera (T) Trillion 12 18
Peta (P) Quadrillion 15 24
Exa (E) Quintillion 18 30
Zetta (Z) Sextillion 21 36
Yotta (Y) Septillion 24 42
See long scale.
Storage and Channels Measured in
CPU word size bits
Bus/Channel width bits
Disk, tape bytes
Overall memory capacity bytes
SIMM and DIMM modules bytes
Individual memory chip bits
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Fractions of a second 10 to the
Millisecond (ms) Thousandth -3
Microsecond (µs) Millionth -6
Nanosecond (ns) Billionth -9
Picosecond (ps) Trillionth -12
Femtosecond (fs) Quadrillionth -15
Attosecond (as) Quintillionth -18
Zeptosecond (zs) Sextillionth -21
Yoctosecond (ys) Septillionth -24
Transmit/Transfer Speed Measured in
Network line bits/sec
Communications line bits/sec
Disk transfer rate bytes/sec
Disk access time ms
Memory access time ns
Machine cycle µs, ns
Instruction execution µs, ns
Transistor switching ns, ps, fs
CPU Speed - Clock Cycles Per Second
See Hertz.
kilohertz (kHz) thousand
megahertz (MHz) million
gigahertz (GHz) billion
terahertz (THz) trillion
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