Re: beyond _tera_[Fwd: dozenal and hexadecimal digits]

> Date:         Sun, 14 May 2000 15:50:26 EDT
> From: Jonathan Chang <Zhang2323@...>
> Question:
>     If _mega_ = million
>     _giga_ = billion
>         &
>     _tera_= trillion,
>         what comes after these?
peta and exa (as many people have said already). These are both from
Greek, meaning 'huge', just like giga and tera.

I usually remember the ones after giga by the number of 3-zero groups:

        prefix  groups  pseudo-greek/latin
        tera    4               tetra-
        peta    5               penta-
        exa     6               exa-
        zotta   7               septi-
        yotta   8               octi-

Going the other way, micro, nano and pico just have to be learnt. But
femto and atto are obviously the number of zeroes in Scandinavian ---
15 = femton, 18 = atton; zepto and yocto are even more transparently
derived from Latin than zotta and yotta.

The Z and Y in the last two prefixes in each series are to get unique
one letter prefixes, but someone in ISO must have had great fun coming
up with them anyway.

If things grow like they have, I may actually get to see a computer
system managing a zottabyte of data before I retire in about 25 years.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)