From the Greek meaning Giant
Giga comes from the Greek word meaning "giant".
A Billion, A Thousand Million, or Ten to the Power Nine
It's a prefix in the metric system representing a "thousand million" or more colloquially, a "billion", or ten to the power nine, or ten to the power ten minus one. It was used in the film Back to the Future ("Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine..out of a Delorean?").
The Giga in CPU Clock Rates
Say, a CPU has a clock rate of 2 GHz. It means it has a clock rate of 2 billion Hertz. This is the "frequency" of the oscillator crystal (crystal oscillators produce sine wave signals with very precise frequency).
The Giga in Computer Speed
One Gigaflop is one billion floating point operations a second.
What's next after Giga?
After Giga, the next notch is Tera. A tera is ten to the power twelve or a million million a.k.a. a trillion. It has the symbol T. It is derived from the Greek teras meaning "monster".
Giga comes from the Greek word meaning "giant".
A Billion, A Thousand Million, or Ten to the Power Nine
It's a prefix in the metric system representing a "thousand million" or more colloquially, a "billion", or ten to the power nine, or ten to the power ten minus one. It was used in the film Back to the Future ("Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine..out of a Delorean?").
The Giga in CPU Clock Rates
Say, a CPU has a clock rate of 2 GHz. It means it has a clock rate of 2 billion Hertz. This is the "frequency" of the oscillator crystal (crystal oscillators produce sine wave signals with very precise frequency).
The Giga in Computer Speed
One Gigaflop is one billion floating point operations a second.
What's next after Giga?
After Giga, the next notch is Tera. A tera is ten to the power twelve or a million million a.k.a. a trillion. It has the symbol T. It is derived from the Greek teras meaning "monster".
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