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Zettabyte

Multiples of bytes
SI decimal prefixesBinary
usage		IEC binary prefixes
Name
(Symbol)		ValueName
(Symbol)		Value
kilobyte (kB)103210kibibyte (KiB)210
megabyte (MB)106220mebibyte (MiB)220
gigabyte (GB)109230gibibyte (GiB)230
terabyte (TB)1012240tebibyte (TiB)240
petabyte (PB)1015250pebibyte (PiB)250
exabyte (EB)1018260exbibyte (EiB)260
zettabyte (ZB)1021270zebibyte (ZiB)270
yottabyte (YB)1024280yobibyte (YiB)280
See also: Multiples of bits · Orders of magnitude of data

A zettabyte (symbol ZB, derived from the SI prefix zetta-) is a quantity of information or information storage capacity equal to 1021 bytes or 1,000 exabytes (or one sextillion (one long scale trilliard) bytes).[1][2][3][4][5]

As of April 2012[update], no storage system has achieved one zettabyte of information. The combined space of all computer hard drives in the world was estimated at approximately 160 exabytes in 2006.[6] This has increased rapidly however, as Seagate Technology reported selling 330 exabytes worth of hard drives during the 2011 Fiscal Year.[7] As of 2009, the entire World Wide Web was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes.[8] This is a half zettabyte.

  • 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = 10007 bytes = 1021 bytes

The term "zebibyte" (ZiB), using a binary prefix, is used for the corresponding power of 1024.

Comparisons for scale

A zettabyte is equal to 1,073,741,824 (~ 1 billion) terabytes.

  • The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 0.432 zettabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 0.715 in 1993, 1.2 in 2000, and 1.9 (optimally compressed) zettabytes in 2007 (this is the informational equivalent to every person on earth receiving 174 newspapers per day).[9][10]
  • Mark Liberman calculated the storage requirements for all human speech ever spoken at 42 zettabytes if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio. This was done in response to a popular expression that states "all words ever spoken by human beings" could be stored in approximately 5 exabytes of data (see exabyte for details). Liberman did freely confess that "maybe the authors [of the exabyte estimate] were thinking about text".[12]
  • Research from the University of Southern California reports that in 2007, humankind successfully sent 1.9 zettabytes of information through broadcast technology such as televisions and GPS.[13]

References

  1. ^ Tom Burton (2008-01-31). "Zettabyte flood predicted for 2015". http://www.fierceenterprisecommunicat ions.com/story/zettabyte-flood-predic ted-2015/2008-01-31.
  2. ^ Lucas Mearian (2007-03-06). "A zettabyte by 2010: Corporate data grows fiftyfold in three years". Computerworld. https://www.computerworld.com/s/artic le/9012364/A_zettabyte_by_2010_Corpor ate_data_grows_fiftyfold_in_three_yea rs.
  3. ^ Lucas Mearian (2008-03-11). "Study: Digital universe and its impact bigger than we thought". Computerworld. https://www.computerworld.com/s/artic le/9067639/Study_Digital_universe_and _its_impact_bigger_than_we_thought.
  4. ^ "Internet Traffic to Reach a Zettabyte by 2015, Says Study". 2008-01-31. http://www.circleid.com/posts/813110_ internet_traffic_graph_zettabyte/.
  5. ^ Bret Swanson & George Gilder (2008-01-29). "The Impact of Video and Rich Media on the Internet – A ‘zettabyte’ by 2015?". Discovery Institute. http://www.discovery.org/a/4428.
  6. ^ John F. Gantz (March 2007). "An IDC White Paper: The Expanding Digital Universe" (PDF). EMC. http://www.emc.com/about/destination/ digital_universe/pdf/Expanding_Digita l_Universe_IDC_WhitePaper_022507.pdf.
  7. ^ Douglas Perry (2011-07-22). "The Average HDD is Now 590 GB in Capacity". Tom's Hardware. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seag ate-hdd-gigabyte-terabyte-quarter-res ult,13118.html.
  8. ^ Richard Wray (2009-05-18). "Internet data heads for 500bn gigabytes". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/20 09/may/18/digital-content-expansion.
  9. ^ Martin Hilbert and Priscila López (2011-02-10). "The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information". University of Vermont. http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/pape rs/others/2011/hilbert2011a.pdf. Vol. 332 no. 6025 pp. 60-65
  10. ^ Martin Hilbert (2011-06-11). "World_info_capacity_animation". Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIKPj OuwqHo.
  11. ^ "IDC Predicts 2012 Will Be the Year of Mobile and Cloud Platform Wars as IT Vendors Vie for Leadership While the Industry Redefines Itself". IDC. 2011-12-01. http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?contain erId=prUS23177411.
  12. ^ Mark Liberman (2003-11-03). "Zettascale Linguistics". University of Pennsylvania. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langua gelog/archives/000087.html. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
  13. ^ Suzanne Wu (2011-02-10). "How Much Information Is There in the World?". University of Southern California. http://news.usc.edu/#!/article/29360/ How-Much-Information-Is-There-in-the- World.
  14. ^ Roger E. Bohn & James E. Short (January 2010). "How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers". University of California, San Diego. http://hmi.ucsd.edu/pdf/HMI_2009_Cons umerReport_Dec9_2009.pdf.
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