Yotta on my mind

Okay, I'm calm now. Back to yottabytes...

The IEC proposed that the metric prefixes (kilo, mega, giga, etc.) always refer to the decimal multiples (1000 times the previous multiple). To handle the binary multiple they took the first two letters of the metric prefix and then added "bi". For example, "kilo" becomes "kibi". For the abbreviations, 'K' indicates a decimal multiple while "Ki" indicates a binary multiple.

Unfortunately, this hasn't really caught on. I suspect that the reason is that the IEC is a twitty European standards organization and, like all twitty European standards organizations, they charge you money to read their standards. In the wild and wooly internet this only really works if adherence to your standard is a requirement, either of the government or of a significant customer segment. This one ain't, so very few of the techies seem to know of it, and fewer seem to give a rodent's behind. Which is a shame, really, because it could remove some confusion.

Speaking of twitty Europeans, what's up with money? Multiples, that is. If you've ever read anything about money from Europe (a stretch, I'll admit, for most Merkins) then you've probably figured out that they don't have the same definition for billion as we do. Actually, the Brits have officially, if not practically, adopted the Merkin way, but the rest of old Europe hasn't.

What I'm talking about is how we define a billion as 1000 million but the twitty Europeans define it as a million millions. I agree! Why would a continent that loves the metric system, which uses multiples for orders of thousands get sidetracked by money multiples using orders of a million?

For my slower readers, we (Merkins) define a trillion as 1,000 billions, but the TE (Twitty Europeans) define it as 1,000,000 billions.


Here, in one handy table, is a list of multiples:

          metric       IEC
          decimal     binary      Merkin         TE
value     prefix      prefix      money         money
---------------------------------------------------------
10**3    kilo  (K)   kibi (Ki)   thousand      thousand
10**6    mega  (M)   mebi (Mi)   million       million
10**9    giga  (G)   gibi (Gi)   billion       milliard
10**12   tera  (T)   tebi (Ti)   trillion      billion
10**15   peta  (P)   pebi (Pi)   quadrillion   billiard
10**18   exa   (E)   exbi (Ei)   quintillion   trillion
10**21   zetta (Z)   zebi (Zi)   sextillion    trilliard
10**24   yotta (Y)   yobi (Yi)   septillion    quadrillion

I hope you can put it to good use.