Units of measurement

[Ridirich]

Hey guys, I was bored today and my fiencee and I were discussing units of measurement for computers. Here is what we got.

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
(?)byte=1024 lumabyte

I am unsure that there is anything higher than that, but my calculator stopped at udabyte, and it could not carry any more decimals rofl. So, I am going to say that by my calculations, a lumabyte is....big. Rofl.

In any case, anyone know of a larger measurement or is that as high as it goes? I am sure at some point windows will no longer say "your harddrive is (x)bytes large" instead it will probably say "your harddrive is (x) terabyte large" and keep going from there....though, is there really enough data in the world to fill a lumabyte? Can you imagine defragging THAT drive?

[bascule]

In any case, anyone know of a larger measurement or is that as high as it goes?

Well, let's see what my good friend Seth Lloyd has to say:

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110141

Computational capacity of the universe

Merely by existing, all physical systems register information. And by evolving dynamically in time, they transform and process that information. The laws of physics determine the amount of information that a physical system can register (number of bits) and the number of elementary logic operations that a system can perform (number of ops). The universe is a physical system. This paper quantifies the amount of information that the universe can register and the number of elementary operations that it can have performed over its history. The universe can have performed no more than 10¹²⁰ ops on 10⁹⁰ bits.

By my calculations, a lumabyte represents approximately 10⁷⁴ bits of information. So, to reach the universe's capacity to store and represent information, you'd need to get up another 16 orders of magnitude or so...

[minihacker316]

Well, there could be a googoleplexbyte, though I'm not sure how you would actually call it, which is 1 foolowed by 10^100 times.

[robman]

I don't think I fully agree with Seth Lloyd; atleast until I more fully understand what he means by all of that.

The Univers is expanding and we still not have all of the forces linked. I suspect there is much more that we have not discovered, and therefore can obviously not be included in Mr. Lloyd's calculations. He talks as if there is some kind of measuring system that he would abide by. If using a different system, one could probably generate a bigger number.


About the disk space stuff-
I also guess that the googleplex would be the highest possible space that is measurable. (measurable because it's the highest named number)

But what would you call such a number? When they assigned penta to 5 they were certainly never thinking about such large numbers. It makes me wonder who makes up all this stuff, and who has the authority to name such a number officially.

[Voltage Spike]

Some interesting notes:

Everything after "yotta" hasn't been approved by any organization I know of. The proposed extensions (which you post) work backwards through the alphabet (someone saw "Z" and then "Y" and thought it would be cute to proceed) so the next step after lyma- would probably begin with a "k" and sound Latin-y.

The reason the proposals stop at luma- is because the group that proposed the extensions felt that the physical limitations of the universe would prevent the use of a larger prefix in a real-world scenario.

If you dislike ambiguity, the prefixes you post are actually powers of 10 and not powers of 2. The "official" binary prefixes are kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, tebi-, pebi-, exbi-, zebi-, and yobi-), but, based on past naming conversions, we could probably guess the equivalent proposed names (xobi-, webi-, etc.).

I am sure at some point windows will no longer say "your harddrive is (x)bytes large" instead it will probably say "your harddrive is (x) terabyte large" and keep going from there....

`df -h`

googleplex

It's actually spelled "googolplex" (minihacker316 was almost correct).

Googleplex, on the other hand, is the name of Google's world headquarters.

[Ridirich]

http://www.fpx.de/fp/Fun/Googolplex/

Googolplex(mentioned in 'Back to the Future' btw) is another word for infinity. Honestly, there will never be a unit that is unmeasured, because we, as human beings, need closure on how large something is and that object must always be finite within our understanding.

[Voltage Spike]

http://www.fpx.de/fp/Fun/Googolplex/

It looks like you answered your own question: a Frankabyte has been, is, and will continue to be the largest possible unit of measurement.

[Ridirich]

Strange how that happens, isnt it? :p

[robman]

It looks like you answered your own question: a Frankabyte has been, is, and will continue to be the largest possible unit of measurement.

For the record, I define a Frank to be one more than the largest number you can come up with.

But what if I invented a number that is frank + 1 and I called it a bob?

Then, someone, other then me, would have to input a value for frank, say a googolplex. The frank would be a googolplex + 1. But, because my bob isn't the inputers number + 1, but rather the frank +1. That would make it a googolplex + 2 at it's highest name-able value.