Java Glossary : metric

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metric
A decimal system of measures used nearly everywhere but in the USA. Even in the USA, it is used in medicine, scientific and engineering work, and for international trade. It is based on standard prefixes. e.g gram (the mass of about a sugar cube of water), kilogram (a 100 grams), milligram (one thousandth of a gram) or metre (a little longer than a yardstick), kilometre (1000 metres, 5/8 mile), millimetre (one thousandth of a metre).

Because RAM necessarily comes in modules sizes of even powers of two, the prefix scheme was modified for measuring bytes by even powers of two. Unfortunately, vendors use the binary scheme for measuring RAM capacity but the decimal scheme for measuring hard disk capacity. I suspect they do this primarily to inflate the apparent disk capacity by 7%, and because their competitors also do this, rather than as protest against the heretic binary RAM byte measuring prefix convention.

prefix American English Standard Decimal
Multiplier 		Power of 10 Byte Measure
Multiplier 		Byte Measure
Power of 2
exa quintillion
(British trillion) 		1,000,000,000,000,000,000 1018 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 260
peta quadrillion 1,000,000,000,000,000 1015 1,125,899,906,842,624 250
tera trillion
(British billion) 		1,000,000,000,000 1012 1,099,511,627,776 240
giga billion 1,000,000,000 109 1,073,741,824 230
mega million 1,000,000 106 1,048,576 220
kilo thousand 1000 103 1024 210
hecto hundred 100 102    
deca ten 10 101    
deci tenth 1/10 10-1    
centi hundredth 1/100 10-2    
milli thousandth 1/1000 10-3    
micro millionth 1/1,000,000 10-6    
nano billionth 1/1,000,000,000 10-9    
pico trillionth
(British billionth) 		1/1,000,000,000,000 10-12    
femto quadrillionth 1/1,000,000,000,000,000 10-15    
atto quintillionth
(British trillionth) 		1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000 10-18    

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