What is a Yottabyte

Last update: 23/07/2024
Author Daniel Terrasa

yottabyte

Bytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes... We all regularly handle these storage measurement units and understand their scope and capacity. However, at certain levels we feel lost, because the human brain is not prepared to assume "astronomical" figures. That is why you have to be very careful when explaining What is a Yottabyte?

All these units are used for indicate the capacity of a storage unit, based on the smallest unit: the Byte. Depending on the case, it is more advisable to use one or the other. For example, the capacity of a USB or SD card It is usually expressed in Gigabytes.

Although its capacity has now been greatly surpassed, to understand the entire system we must go to the beginning: the Byte (B), which is made up of 8 bits. From there, To move up the scale you have to multiply the previous level by 1.024. In this way, one Megabyte (MB) is equivalent to 1.204 Bytes (B).

This is the official scale of storage units in the computing field. Be careful, because the accumulation of figures in larger units can become dizzying:

  • BYTE (B) – Value: 1
  • KILOBYTE (KB) – Value: 1.024¹ (1.024 B).
  • MEGABYTE (MB) – Value: 1.024² (1.048.576 B).
  • GIGABYTE (GB) – Value: 1.024³ (1.073.741.824 B).
  • TERABYTE (TB) – Value: 1.024⁴ (1.099.511.627.776 B).
  • PETABYTE (PB) – Value: 1.024⁵ (1.125.899.906.842.624 B).
  • EXABYTE (EB) – Value: 1.024⁶ (1.152.921.504.606.846.976 B).
  • ZETTABYTE (ZB) – Value: 1.024⁷ (1.180.591.620.717.411.303.424 B).
  • YOTTABYTE (YB) – Value: 1.024⁸ (1.208.925.819.614.629.174.706.176 B).
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And there it is, at the end of the chain, the largest unit of measurement of storage capacity: the Yottabyte. The equivalent of approximately one million trillion megabytes (MB),

Yottabyte: definition and use

The term Yottabyte is formed by combining the Greek word iota and the simplest unit of measurement, the Byte.

yottabyte

Expressing the size of a Yottabitte using other measurements yields figures that are simply unfathomable. For example, 1 YB equals one septillion bytes, that is: 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 bytes, nothing less than a one followed by twenty-four zeros.

Another way to try to visualize what a figure of this magnitude represents is imagine the physical space that a data bank of that size would occupy, if it exists. According to calculations made at the time by the American storage solutions company, Backblaze Inc., to house such an amount of data it would be necessary to build a Data center the size of the states of Delaware and Rhode Island. Transferred to our reference points, the same as the entire province of Soria, for example. That is, an approximate area of ​​10.000 square kilometers. Crazy.

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We said "if it exists" because in reality there is no storage unit, alone or combined, that has capacity for a Yottabyte. Taking into consideration that all the data that Google stores does not even reach 15 Exabytes (which is already a lot), the big question is: What use is a unit of measurement of such size?

The Yottabyte does not have real applications for now, but the evolution and development of Big Data suggests that it will have them much sooner than we imagine. Until recently, the largest hard drives that we could buy already measured their size in Terabytes, but recently models have appeared that already offer capacities measured in Petabytes.

Furthermore, by 2025, the projected amount of data generated each day globally will reach 463 Exabytes. In short: everything is accelerating dramatically.

The future is in the Brontobyte

For now, the use of the Yottabyte It is limited to theoretical applications. And since numbers are infinite, no matter how colossal and overwhelming this unit of measurement may seem to us, there will always be a larger one that makes it smaller.

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bront In fact, some theorists already use as a measure in their calculations and assumptions the figure of Brontobyte (which in turn takes its name from Brontosaurus, , one of the largest dinosaurs known). In pure and simple figures, a Brontobyte would be equivalent to 1.237.940.039.285.380.274.899.124.224 bytes, although to date it is not considered a recognized standard measurement within the International System.

If there is currently nothing capable of storing data the size of a Yottabyte, there is no need to imagine how far we are from the dimensions of the Brontobyte. Even today, the most powerful hard drives and supercomputers with especially expanded memory capacities are still in the Terabyte range. Nothing huge enough to store a Brontobyte has yet been made. There is also nothing so big that it has to be measured using this unit.

However, we are not talking about meaningless theoretical speculation. Sooner or later we will end up seeing how this unthinkable unit of measurement will be used in certain areas such as artificial intelligence or quantum computing, For example. Now it seems like science fiction to us, but that is what the future holds for us. Who knows if we will see the day when even the Brontobyte will fall short!