ORDERS(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual ORDERS(7)

NAME

ordersorders of magnitude

DESCRIPTION

The following table lists common multiples of bytes.
Name Prefix Power of 2 Power of 10
Kilobyte kB 2^10 10^3
Megabyte MB 2^20 10^6
Gigabyte GB 2^30 10^9
Terabyte TB 2^40 10^12
Petabyte PB 2^50 10^15
Exabyte EB 2^60 10^18
Zettabyte ZB 2^70 10^21
Yottabyte YB 2^80 10^24

The following table lists common bit rates as a power of ten.

Name Prefix Bit per second Byte per second
Bit per second bit/s 1 0.125
Byte per second B/s 8 1
Kilobit per second kbit/s 10^3 125
Kilobyte per second kB/s 8 * 10^3 1000
Megabit per second Mbit/s 10^6 125000
Megabyte per second MB/s 8 * 10^6 1000000
Gigabit per second Gbit/s 10^9 125000000
Gigabyte per second GB/s 8 * 10^9 1000000000
Terabit per second Tbit/s 10^12 125000000000
Terabyte per second TB/s 8 * 10^12 1000000000000

The following table lists common orders of magnitude as a power of ten.

Name Order Prefix Symbol Decimal
Septillionth 10^-24 yocto y 0.000000000000000000000001
Sextillionth 10^-21 zepto z 0.000000000000000000001
Quintillionth 10^-18 atto a 0.000000000000000001
Quadrillionth 10^-15 femto f 0.000000000000001
Trillionth 10^-12 pico p 0.000000000001
Billionth 10^-9 nano n 0.000000001
Millionth 10^-6 micro mu 0.000001
Thousandth 10^-3 milli m 0.001
Hundredth 10^-2 centi c 0.01
Tenth 10^-1 deci d 0.1
One 10^0 - - 1
Ten 10^1 deca da 10
Hundred 10^2 hecto h 100
Thousand 10^3 kilo k 1000
Million 10^6 mega M 1000000
Billion 10^9 giga G 1000000000
Trillion 10^12 tera T 1000000000000
Quadrillion 10^15 peta P 1000000000000000
Quintillion 10^18 exa E 1000000000000000000
Sextillion 10^21 zetta Z 1000000000000000000000
Septillion 10^24 yotta Y 1000000000000000000000000

SEE ALSO

units(1), strsuftoll(3), number(6)

STANDARDS

There have been various attempts to standardize the set of binary prefixes. Organizations such as International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have proposed new prefixes such as “kibi”, “mebi”, “gibi”, and “yobi”, but the adoption has been slow at best.
August 6, 2011 NetBSD 6.1