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zettabyte

zettabyte

1 9.5
A very large amount of digital information stored or used worldwide
  • noun
  • /ˈzɛtəˌbaɪt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : zettabyte
  • According to a new study by the University of California, San Diego, from 1980 through 2008, the total number of bytes bitten by Americans has increased by 6% per year and now stands at an incredibly large sounding 3.6 zettabytes.
  • zettabytes of data

Examples

  • In 2010, we frolicked, Googled, waded, and drowned in 1.2 zettabytes of digital bits and bytes.

    Blog text (31)
  • In 2012, 1.8 zettabytes of data will be created on the Internet.

    Blog text (21)
  • No database has stored a zettabyte of information yet.

    Blog text (18)
  • A year later, volume was on an exponential growth curve toward 1.8 zettabytes.

    Blog text (31)
  • 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.

    Blog text (32)
  • Mark Liberman calculated the storage requirements for all human speech ever spoken at 42 zettabytes if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio.

    Blog text (32)
  • According to him, the amount of data on the planet has grown 8x since 2005 to approximately 1.2 zettabytes (a zettabyte is a billion terabytes) and is further expected to grow to an astronomical 35 zettabytes by 2020.

    Blog text (30)
  • It's from a few months ago, and I'm shocked that I haven't heard more about it. In between an exabyte and a yottabyte, there is a zettabyte, which is equal to 1 billion terabytes, or 10^21 bytes.

    Blog text (18)
  • Source: Neal Mohan, vice president of display advertising at Innovation Days Internet Week, June 1. 2015: The majority (61%) of Internet traffic will be via video. Annual global traffic will reach the zettabyte threshold -- that's the equivalent of 250 billion DVDs.

    Academic text (2012)
  • In 2025, the global data economy is expected to surpass 175 zettabytes, reflecting a massive increase in digital information.

Synonyms

ZB
vszettabyte
  • Specialized
8.2

A very large measure for digital data on computers and the internet

is the full written term used instead of the short written form

How Large

zettabyte
  • Specialized
1 9.5
exabyte
  • Specialized
2 9.6
petabyte
  • Specialized
2 7.2
terabyte
  • Specialized
8 4.1
gigabyte
  • Specialized
13 2.7
megabyte
  • Specialized
10 3.0
kilobyte
  • Specialized
4 3.6

Surface Forms

zettabyte singular
zettabytes plural

Morphology

zettabyte = byte (semi-transparent) = zetta + byte + byte

Formally built from the SI scale prefix 'zetta-' plus 'byte' so the structure indicates a very large number of bytes, but the precise magnitude (zetta‑ = 10^21) is specialized knowledge that many learners lack.

Etymology

Zettabyte combines the modern science prefix zetta-, which means '10^21' or a very, very large number, with byte, a common unit of digital data, just like gigabyte or megabyte but much bigger. So, a zettabyte is an extremely large amount of digital information.