# Binary Prefix



## lilEmber (Sep 4, 2009)

I was wondering how far it goes and also how far SI prefix goes, this is what I have so far myself, does it continue and is there stuff I'm missing? What about SI prefix's, how far do they go?

bit=0 or 1
nibble=4 bit
byte=8 bit
megabyte=1024 bytes
gigabyte=1024 megabytes
terabyte=1024 gigabytes
petabyte=1024 terabytes
exabyte=1024 petabyte
zettabyte=1024 exabyte
yottabyte=1024 zettabyte
xonabyte=1024 yottabyte
wekabyte=1024 xonabyte
vundabyte=1024 wekabyte
udabyte=1024 vundabyte
tredabyte=1024 udabyte
sortabyte=1024 tredabyte
rintabyte=1024 sortabyte
quexabyte=1024 rintabyte
peptabyte=1024 quexabyte
ochabyte=1024 peptabyte
nenabyte=1024 ochabyte
mingabyte=1024 nenabyte
lumabyte=1024 mingabyte

Kilo is a thousand, a kilobyte should be 1000 bytes, a byte is 8 bits; kibibyte is 1024 bytes, KiB but kilobyte is also 1024. Next would be mebibyte, then gibibyte, tebi, pebi, exbi, zebi, yobi, etc; why is kilo and kibi the same?

From what I can gather it's a common binary prefix error but when the binary prefix is transferred to si prefix they correspond with si's standard (kilo, mega, etc), which is why both are acceptable; kibibyte is kilobyte, mebibyte is megabyte.

How far does this go, and am I correct?


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## ToeClaws (Sep 4, 2009)

No idea - never took it remotely that far myself.  When I was in school, terabyte was a nearly mythological figure, so discussion never went beyond it. :/


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## Irreverent (Sep 4, 2009)

NewfDraggie said:


> I was wondering how far it goes and also how far SI prefix goes, this is what I have so far myself, does it continue and is there stuff I'm missing? What about SI prefix's, how far do they go?



I don't think that SI units actually end, per se.  Mathematically, most nerds concede that a googleplex (or 10^googol) is about as large a number as you can go in any practical discussion.  So maybe a Googolbyte or 10 to the power of 10 to the power of  100 bytes is it.  10^10^100 is a lot of bits. 



ToeClaws said:


> When I was in school, terabyte was a nearly mythological figure, so discussion never went beyond it. :/



And yet to-day, we have 3 Petabyte storage arrays at work.  DigitalVault(tm) is using a half petabyte right now.

Hell I've got three or more 1TB disks kicking around the house.


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## ToeClaws (Sep 4, 2009)

Irreverent said:


> And yet to-day, we have 3 Petabyte storage arrays at work.  DigitalVault(tm) is using a half petabyte right now.
> 
> Hell I've got three or more 1TB disks kicking around the house.



Hehe, yeah I know - it's crazy.  It wasn't so long ago that I dropped $570 for a 1.2g drive, which at the time, was the biggest on the consumer market.  Now people freaken GIVE away 2g or less USB sticks that are probably 2 or 3 times faster than that drive was.


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## Liam (Sep 4, 2009)

If someone can tell me when a Gigabyte drive first came out and when a Terabyte drive first came out, I can make a graph for you so you can see about how long it will be before the lumabyte drive is released.


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## lilEmber (Sep 4, 2009)

gulielmus said:


> If someone can tell me when a Gigabyte drive first came out and when a Terabyte drive first came out, I can make a graph for you so you can see about how long it will be before the lumabyte drive is released.



It's not linear, you'll have to start with bytes and kilobytes, then megabytes and gigabytes, then terabytes. And not just a single kilobyte, but every demonination up to mega, from mega to giga, giga to tera; it's not a linear flow, the sizes we're accomplishing are growing at an exponential rate.


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## Shino (Sep 4, 2009)

o.0 I didn't know any of those beyond yottabytes. Wow. Guess I need to start studying again.

*blinks and gapes* God, the thought of having a 2 exobyte hard drive. It makes me hard happy. ^_^


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## Irreverent (Sep 4, 2009)

I don't think we'll see drives beyond several thousand terabytes.  Bigger than that and you have access problems due to mechanical factors.  The first individual petabyte drive will be a solid state affair.  The current petabyte drives are raid arrays of raid-100 disks.


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## phantasmyth (Sep 4, 2009)

(by the way)

also
word = 16bit
dword = 32bit
qword = 64bit


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## hitokage (Sep 5, 2009)

gulielmus said:


> If someone can tell me when a Gigabyte drive first came out and when a Terabyte drive first came out, I can make a graph for you so you can see about how long it will be before the lumabyte drive is released.


If I remember correctly gigabyte sized drives first turned-up in 1995, maybe 1994. I think terabyte drives came out last year/maybe the year before.


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## Runefox (Sep 5, 2009)

Technically, binary prefixes are different from the SI prefixes, in both name and definition. According to proper form, the SI prefixes are actually powers of 10, period. The convention that's actually technically correct is like this:

byte = byte / B (common, universal; A byte is a byte)
"kilobyte" = *kibibyte / KiB*
"megabyte" = *mebibyte / MiB*
"gigabyte" = *gibibyte / GiB*
"terabyte" = *tebibyte / TiB*
"petabyte" = *pebibyte / PiB*
"exabyte" = *exbiyte / EiB*
...
Etc. These can actually be replaced by anything that requires the base-2 scheme, so replace -byte/-B with whatever is being referred to. You may have seen this notation used in various flavours of *NIX (much like you typically find the term "URI" in *NIX rather than "URL". The term _URI_ refers to a broader scope which includes _URL's_).

Using the SI prefixes, hard disc drive manufacturers have been exploiting the common capacity notation to specifically refer to the SI definition of Kilo/Mega/Giga/etc. 80GB = 80,000,000,000 bytes, rather than 85,899,345,920 bytes, for example.


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## Takun (Sep 5, 2009)

NewfDraggie said:


> It's not linear, you'll have to start with bytes and kilobytes, then megabytes and gigabytes, then terabytes. And not just a single kilobyte, but every demonination up to mega, from mega to giga, giga to tera; it's not a linear flow, the sizes we're accomplishing are growing at an exponential rate.



Number of transistors is now doubling every 12 months instead of 18.  Could work an estimate out that way if you were to really care I assume.


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## Runefox (Sep 5, 2009)

Takumi_L said:


> Number of transistors is now doubling every 12 months instead of 18.  Could work an estimate out that way if you were to really care I assume.



Transistors doesn't really do anything for data density on magnetic storage (at least, not directly), so it's not a reliable indicator. There have been many recent advances in the technology, and manufacturers continue to push the data density further and further. I have to wonder where we'll hit the wall with magnetic storage; For some reason, I have the feeling it'll be sooner than we think.

With that said, SSD's (solid state drives) have recently exploded in terms of capacity and are quickly catching up with traditional hard drives; Save for the cost, most people could currently run very easily on an SSD, and with a projected failure rate at the far end of the ideal warranty for a platter hard drive (5 years) and beyond, with that number rising with each iteration and with a performance level rivalling and in some cases exceeding that of traditional hard drives. It's a technology that, as far as the consumer world is concerned, is in its infancy, but we'll likely see a lot more of it in the coming years.

I'd guess that in the next five years or so, we might see SSD's start to overtake normal platter hard drives in the notebook market (they've already begun their encroachment), and give it at most 15 years for it to overtake spinning discs on consumer desktops/workstations, unless something else comes along (which isn't likely). With fewer parts and no mechanical parts, they may actually become cheaper to manufacture than hard drives once the tech exits the R&D phase into the mainstream.

Of course, predictions for the future of computing are rarely accurate. It just seems very likely that SSD's are going to become a lot more common than they currently are; Supposedly, there are actually experimental 1TB SSD's in existence right now, much like there were experimental (and wildly expensive) 64GB SSD's a couple years ago.


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## lilEmber (Sep 5, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Technically, binary prefixes are different from the SI prefixes, in both name and definition. According to proper form, the SI prefixes are actually powers of 10, period. The convention that's actually technically correct is like this:
> 
> byte = byte / B (common, universal; A byte is a byte)
> "kilobyte" = *kibibyte / KiB*
> ...


That's actually what I was saying though... <..<


> Kilo is a thousand, a kilobyte should be 1000 bytes, a byte is 8 bits; kibibyte is 1024 bytes, KiB but kilobyte is also 1024. Next would be mebibyte, then gibibyte, tebi, pebi, exbi, zebi, yobi, etc; why is kilo and kibi the same?
> 
> From what I can gather it's a common binary prefix error but when the binary prefix is transferred to si prefix they correspond with si's standard (kilo, mega, etc), which is why both are acceptable;* kibibyte is kilobyte, mebibyte is megabyte*.


But you explained it better :3


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## Runefox (Sep 5, 2009)

NewfDraggie said:


> That's actually what I was saying though... <..<


Upon further inspection, you did _mention_ that, but you didn't really make much of it. XP I didn't even notice it when I read your post since you focused so much on the SI prefixes and the question of "how high".



> But you explained it better :3


Of course.


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## Aden (Sep 5, 2009)

gulielmus said:


> If someone can tell me when a Gigabyte drive first came out and when a Terabyte drive first came out, I can make a graph for you so you can see about how long it will be before the lumabyte drive is released.



You must be some kind of genius


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## LizardKing (Sep 6, 2009)

So apparently a 24-bit image of the entire surface of the earth at 1200dpi would need about 3.4 yottabytes (without compression).

Google Earth 2050?

(Yeah I was bored)


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