The following units of measure are used to define storage and transmission capacities. For measurements of a meter, see metric system. See binary values and NIST binary.
10 to the
SPACE - Bits/bytes power of
Kilo (K) Thousand 3
Mega (M) Million 6
Giga (G) Billion 9
Tera (T) Trillion 12
Peta (P) Quadrillion 15
Exa (E) Quintillion 18
Zetta (Z) Sextillion 21
Yotta (Y) Septillion 24
10 to the
TIME - Fraction of a second power of
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
Storage/Channel Capacity Measured in
CPU word size bits
Bus/Channel size bits
Disk, tape bytes
Overall memory capacity bytes
SIMM and DIMM modules bytes
Individual memory chip bits
Transmission/Transfer Speed Measured in
Network line/channel 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
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