Pergigabyte

Pergigabyte is a hypothetical unit of digital information storage. It represents one trillion bytes. While the prefix "giga" commonly refers to one billion, the prefix "per" is not a standard SI prefix. If it were to be adopted, it would signify a multiplier of 1000 (10^3) in some contexts, or 1024 (2^10) in others, particularly within computing.

The term "pergigabyte" itself is not widely recognized or used in standard technical discourse. It appears to be a portmanteau of "per" and "gigabyte." In the context of data storage, where prefixes like kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, and yotta are already established, "pergigabyte" would logically fall between gigabyte and terabyte if following a base-1000 system, or between terabyte and petabyte if following a base-1024 system. However, the established prefix for 10^12 bytes is terabyte, and for 2^40 bytes is tebibyte.

The creation of such a unit might arise from a misunderstanding of existing prefixes or a desire to conceptualize extremely large data capacities beyond current common usage. As data storage continues to grow exponentially, new units are regularly introduced to describe these massive scales, but "pergigabyte" has not become a formally accepted term within the scientific or computing communities. Its usage is likely confined to informal discussions or speculative contexts.