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11.2.10

Technical Numeric Prefixes


Standard Metric (SI) Prefixes, Values and Common Usage
There are many different size prefixes that are used to denote large and small numbers. The standard prefixes, from one trillion to one trillionth, are denoted below, along with some of the common places in the computer world where you will see them used:
Name
Abbr.
Decimal Power
Factor
Common Usage
tera
T
10^12
1,000,000,000,000
large data warehouses (TB)
giga
G
10^9
1,000,000,000
mass storage (GB), CPU speed (GHz)
mega
M
10^6
1,000,000
storage (MB), memory (MB), CPU speed (MHz), others
kilo
K
10^3
1,000
memory (KB), communication speed (KB/sec), others
milli
m
10^-3
0.001
drive access speed (ms)
micro
ยต (Greek "mu")
10^-6
0.000001
various circuit speeds (us)
nano
n
10^-9
0.000000001
memory speed (ns), CPU cycle length (ns), capacitors (nF)
pico
p
10^-12
0.000000000001
capacitors (pF)

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