Little by little we are going to have to become familiar with units of measurement such as the zettabyte. Whether due to the development of increasingly larger storage units or the needs to theoretically express large amounts of digital storage,
It is a unit of measurement with still few practical applications, but which, like the others that we know and usually handle (megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte...), is based on the scale established by the smallest fundamental unit: the Byte.
How much is a Zettabyte?
El Zettabyte (abbreviated ZB) is a unit of digital storage measurement equivalent to thousand trillion bytes. An amount of data that exceeds our imagination. Its numerical expression would be this:
- 1 Zettabyte = 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 bytes (10^21 bytes).
It should be noted here that “Zetta” is a decimal prefix which, within the international system of units, always means 1021. However, since computers do not calculate according to the decimal system, but rather use the binary system, the correct way to express the zettabyte is 2 to the power of 70.
A good way to "visualize" the value of a ZB is the one proposed by Thomas Barnett Jr., from Cisco Systems: "If each Terabyte in a Zettabyte were a kilometer, it would be equivalent to 1.300 round trips to the Moon, that is, 768.800 kilometers."
In the list below, we show you the place that the Zettabyte occupies within the official scale of storage units when we talk about computing. As you see, it is about astronomical figures which represent a tough test for the human brain's ability to weigh them:
- 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).
However, this is not the largest unit of measurement that exists to account for storage units. Above it lies the yottabyte, which would be made up of no less than a thousand Zettabytes. Even higher is the Brontobyte, which at the moment is not a recognized standard.
What is the Zettabyte for?
At first, it may seem that such a gigantic unit of measurement seems to have no practical uses. But this is not the case: the amount of data generated globally continues to increase at an increasingly accelerated rate. This has made the zettabyte concept increasingly relevant in certain areas. Here are some examples:
Cloud storage and Big Data
Large companies like Amazon, Google or Microsoft They store huge amounts of data for their clients on the cloud, reaching volumes so large that they are beginning to be worthy of being counted in zettabytes. The same can be said regarding the vast amount of unstructured data, such as social network records.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Every day there are more and more connected devices in our homes, our cities and our environment: smart appliances, surveillance cameras, sensors... Zettabytes are used to measure all that infrastructure. In theory, 5G networks and future wireless technologies that have not yet arrived will have the mission of facilitating the transmission of this enormous amount of data.
Simulations and supercomputing
Various fields such as astrophysics or climatology use simulations that generate massive amounts of data, which are generally measured in zettabytes. A good example of this is climate models, which are increasingly more detailed and deeper thanks to the massive use of data.
In summary, ZB is already an essential unit to manage the vast growth of data typical of the digital era in which we are already immersed.
The Zettabyte Era
This is an expression that has become popular in recent years and has managed to put Zettabyte in the spotlight of many mathematical theorists and computing experts.
While it is true that the phrase “Zettabyte Era” is used to express the overall spectacular growth of digital data used around the world, to be more precise it refers to the at which point global data usage reached the order of magnitude of zettabytes. And there is a date for that: the year 2012. It is the year we can mark as the beginning of this new era.
In a broader sense, the expression "Zettabyte Era" is used as a way to refer to these years of exponential growth of all forms of digital data that exist in the world, from what is on the Internet to any other form of digital data such as voice data from mobile phone calls.
If the estimates of computer specialists are to be taken seriously, the amount of data existing on the planet will reach the dizzying figure of 2025 zettabytes in 175. That means that, if we continue at this pace, in the not too distant future we will be talking about the "Yottabyte Era."
Editor specialized in technology and internet issues with more than ten years of experience in different digital media. I have worked as an editor and content creator for e-commerce, communication, online marketing and advertising companies. I have also written on economics, finance and other sectors websites. My work is also my passion. Now, through my articles in Tecnobits, I try to explore all the news and new opportunities that the world of technology offers us every day to improve our lives.