CPE 229/315/353
Professor Stearns
Computer Architecture Units
Notes:
- All numbers must be normalized to
whole and fractional units where the whole number is between
1 and 999.
Example: it is incorrect to say .23 milliseconds; the correct
representation is 230 microseconds.
- 1.5 Gigabytes != 1500 Megabytes because these units
represent base 2 quantities.
Units of Storage
| Name |
Power of 2 |
| Kilo (K) |
210 |
| Mega (M) |
220 |
| Giga (G) |
230 |
| Tera (T) |
2 40 |
Time Units
| Name |
Power of 10 |
| milli (m) |
10 -3 |
| micro (u) |
10 -6 |
| nano (n) |
10 -9 |
| pico (p) |
10 -12 |
Hertz Units
| Name |
Power of 10 |
| Kilo (K) |
10 3 |
| Mega(M) |
10 6 |
| Giga (M) |
10 9 |
There is a good memory aid for converting base 2 units of storage into the
proper units.
Consider the first digit in the exponent of the base 2 number.
If the digit is 0, the quantity will be represented as bytes.
If the digit is 1, the quantity will be represented as Kilobytes.
If the digit is 2, the quantity will be represented as Megabytes.
If the digit is 3, the quantity will be represented as Gigabytes.
Consider the second digit in the exponent of the base 2 number.
If the digit is 1, the quantity is 2.
If the digit is 2, the quantity is 4.
If the digit is 3, the quantity is 8.
etc, etc.
If the digit is 8, the quantity is 256.
If the digit is 9, the quantity is 512.
Examples
2 28 is 256 Megabytes
(first digit == 2 and second digit == 8.
2 32 is 4 Gigabytes (first digit == 3 and second digit == 2.
2 5 is 32 bytes (first digit == 0 and second digit == 5.
Last updated on 9/16/00