The Yottabyte is a computer storage unit of measure symbolized YB.
One yottabyte is equal to 1024 zettabytes (using the traditional definition of these units).
The yottabyte has no practical application today as it is too large a storage unit.
1 YB equals 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes or 2 to the power of 80.
How big is a yottabyte?
The size of the Internet in 2030 is estimated to be 1 yottabyte, if the current (2018) growth factor of 40% annually is maintained.
With this amount of data one would be able to keep the lives of all the people on Earth from the moment of their birth until their death on video. Yottabyte is 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits. The same number of water molecules will produce only 240 grams of water.
In 2010, it was estimated that storing a yottabyte on terabyte-sized drives would require a billion apple-sized data centers, as large as the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
By the end of 2016, memory density had increased to the point where a yottabyte could be stored on SD cards that were roughly twice the size of the Hindenburg airship.
With a recently demonstrated technology using DNA computing for storage, a yottabyte of capacity would require a volume between 0.003 and 1 cubic meter, depending on the number of redundant backups desired and storage density: «Our genetic code packs thousands of million gigabytes in a single gram». ADN is a much more advanced technology than microSDXC cards (for this application) and is accompanied by uncertain costs, but this suggests potential information density.
related terminology
Byte
zettabyte
related article
Byte unit conversions.
Name
Symbol
Binary
number of bytes
Equivalent
kilobyte
KB
2^10
1,024
=
megabyte
MB
2^20
1,048,576
1,024KB
gigabyte
UK
2^30
1,073,741,824
1,024MB
terabyte
TB
2^40
1,099,511,627,776
1,024GB
petabyte
PB
2^50
1,125,899,906,842,624
1,024TB
exabyte
EB
2^60
1,152,921,504,606,846,976
1,024PB
zettabyte
ZB
2^70
1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
1,024EB
yottabyte
YB
2^80
1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176
1,024ZB
To understand the difference with kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte…
Read: Units of bytes.
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