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The yottabyte (derived from the SI prefix yotta-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one septillion (one long scale quadrillion or 10) bytes (one quadrillion gigabytes). The unit symbol for the yottabyte is YB.

As of 2011, no storage system or network has achieved even one thousandth of a yottabyte (a zettabyte) of information. The combined space of all computer hard drives in the world was estimated at approximately 160 exabytes in 2006, and as of 2009, the Internet was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes.

Using the figure that earth is 15% silicon, and microSD cards which weigh 0.5 grams, if all the silicon on earth was used as polysilicon (assuming plastic weighs nothing and you had all other minerals required), you could theoretically produce 115.6 trillion yottabytes of data storage on the current 64 GB microSD process.

When used with byte multiples, the SI prefix indicates a power of 1000:

1000000000000000000000000bytes = 1000 or 10 bytes

The term "yobibyte" (YiB), using a binary prefix, is used for the corresponding power of 1024.

See also

• Binary prefix

References

1. Expanding Digital Universe IDC White Paper (pdf)
2. Internet data heads for 500bn gigabytes

• Units of information