Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Thatsa Lottabytes

There is a Facebook fan page to establish hella- as the official SI prefix for 1024. This is good, but I don't think it goes far enough. I propose that lotta be designated to mean "several orders of magnitude larger than currently achievable."

In 2010 lotta would be defined as 1018.3, as having exabytes of storage seems comfortably out of reach. Each year it would be redefined, marching slowly to infinity (and beyond).

Graphic depiction of kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zeta, yotta, hella, and lotta.
kilo 103
mega 106
giga 109
tera 1012
peta 1015
exa 1018
zetta 1021
yotta 1024
hella 1027 (proposed)
lotta > 1018 (my proposal)