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petabyte

 
Dictionary: pet·a·byte   (pĕt'ə-bīt) pronunciation
n.
  1. A unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 terabytes (250 bytes).
  2. One quadrillion bytes.

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Prefixes for bit and byte multiples
Decimal
Value SI
1000 k kilo
10002 M mega
10003 G giga
10004 T tera
10005 P peta
10006 E exa
10007 Z zetta
10008 Y yotta
Binary
Value IEC JEDEC
1024 Ki kibi K kilo
10242 Mi mebi M mega
10243 Gi gibi G giga
10244 Ti tebi
10245 Pi pebi
10246 Ei exbi
10247 Zi zebi
10248 Yi yobi

A petabyte (derived from the SI prefix peta- ) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quadrillion bytes (short scale), or 1000 terabytes, or 1,000,000 gigabytes. It is abbreviated PB. The prefix peta- (P) indicates a power of 1000:

  • 1 PB = 1,000,000,000,000,000 B = 10005 B = 1015 bytes.

The term "pebibyte", using the binary prefix pebi- (Pi), is used for 10245 bytes.

  • 1 PiB = 1,125,899,906,842,624 B.

Petabytes in use

Examples of the use of "petabyte" to describe data sizes in different fields are:

  • History: According to Kevin Kelly of the New York Times, "the entire [written] works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages" would amount to 50 petabytes of data.[1]
  • Computer hardware: Teradata Database 12 has a capacity of 50 petabytes of compressed data.[2][3]
  • Telecoms: AT&T has about 16 petabytes of data transferred through their networks each day.[4]
  • Archives: The Internet Archive contains about 3 petabytes of data, and is growing at the rate of about 100 terabytes per month as of March, 2009.[5][6]
  • Internet: Google processes about 20 petabytes of data per day.[7]
  • Physics: The 4 experiments in the Large Hadron Collider will produce about 15 petabytes of data per year, which will be distributed over the LHC Computing Grid.[8]
  • Social networks: Facebook has just over 1.5 petabytes of users' photos stored, translating into roughly 10 billion photos.[9]
  • P2P networks: As of October 2009, Isohunt has about 9.76 petabytes of files contained in torrents indexed globally.[10]
  • Online storage: RapidShare stated in April 2008 that it had 5.4 petabytes of storage for users.[11]
  • Games: World of Warcraft utilizes 1.3 petabytes of storage to maintain its game.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ Kelly, Kevin (2006-03-14). "Scan This Book!". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14publishing.html. 
  2. ^ "Teradata Database 13.0 - Database Management - SQL Database". Teradata.com. http://www.teradata.com/t/products-and-services/database/teradata-12/. Retrieved 2009-08-16. 
  3. ^ Paul Rubens (20 Sep 2004). "Thanks for memory (but I need more)". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3673262.stm. "Of course there's no such thing as a petabyte iPod, but the good news is that we may not have too long to wait for one. Hitachi Data Systems already sells a product called the TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform which can manage up to 32 petabytes of storage for the very largest corporations, so you'd have to conclude that a pocket-sized consumer version isn't out of the question in a decade or so." 
  4. ^ "AT&T- News Room". Att.com. 2008-10-23. http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?cdvn=news&newsarticleid=26230&pid=4800. Retrieved 2009-08-16. 
  5. ^ "Internet Archive Frequently Asked Questions". Archive.org. http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php. Retrieved 2009-08-16. 
  6. ^ Mearian, Lucas (2009-03-19). "Internet Archive to unveil massive Wayback Machine data center". Computerworld.com. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=hardware&articleId=9130081&taxonomyId=12&intsrc=kc_top. Retrieved 2009-08-16. 
  7. ^ "MapReduce". Portal.acm.org. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1327452.1327492. Retrieved 2009-08-16. 
  8. ^ "3 October 2008 - CERN: Let the number-crunching begin: the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid celebrates first data". Interactions.org. http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1027032. Retrieved 2009-08-16. 
  9. ^ "Incompatible Browser". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=76191543919&ref=mf. Retrieved 2009-08-16. 
  10. ^ "isoHunt Forums :: View topic - 1.1 Petabytes of files on BitTorrent, network issues". Isohunt.com. http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=145853. Retrieved 2009-10-04. 
  11. ^ Česky. "RapidShare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". En.wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapidshare. Retrieved 2009-08-16. 
  12. ^ "Blizzard Drops World of Warcraft Stat Bomb". Industrygamers.com. 2009-09-18. http://www.industrygamers.com/news/blizzard-drops-world-of-warcraft-stat-bomb/. Retrieved 2009-09-18. 

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Some good "petabyte" pages on the web:


Math
mathworld.wolfram.com
 
 
 
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peta– (prefix)
NIST binary (technology)
XLDB

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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Petabyte" Read more