Computer Measurement Prefixes and Number Naming Conventions

I always forget the quantity prefixes above “tera”. Even more interestingly, one rarely thinks about the numbers’ names. For example, consider the number

1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176

When measuring storage size, this is called a yottabyte. That is 2^80.

If you wanted to say this number in English using the American number naming system, you would use “one septillion two hundred and eight sextillion nine hundred and twenty five quintillion eight hundred and nineteen quadrillion six hundred and fourteen trillion six hundred and twenty nine billion one hundred and seventy four million seven hundred and six thousand one hundred and seventy six.”

Even when hard drive storage is commonly measured in yottabytes, I don’t see this number being spoken allowed often for obvious reasons. Come to think of it, one doesn’t often hear the fully-qualified spoken name of a gigabyte either.

See this page for chart of the prefix names and number names.