Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera

What is Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera?

Kilo, mega, giga and tera are prefixes for measurement units used in the world of computers. Kilo is 1000, mega is 1 million (or a thousand kilos), giga is 1 billion (or a thousand megas), tera is 1 trillion (or a thousand gigas). For example:

• 1 kilobyte equals 1000 bytes.
• 1 megapixel equals 1 million pixels.
• 1 gigahertz equals 1 billion hertz.

Beyond tera we have peta (a thousand teras), exa (a thousand petas), zetta (a thousand exas), and yotta (a thousand zettas).

These terms are usually abbreviated: K, M, G, T, P, E, Z, Y. For example, 4ghz would be 4 gigahertz.