| Prefixes for bit and byte multiples |
| | | 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.
[edit] Petabytes in use
Examples of the use of "petabyte" to describe data sizes in different fields are:
- History: According to Kevin Kelly in 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]
- P2P networks: As of October 2009, Isohunt has about 9.76 petabytes of files contained in torrents indexed globally.[9]
- Games: World of Warcraft utilizes 1.3 petabytes of storage to maintain its game.[10]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
