What's a GigaQuad??

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

The other day, my sister and I were watching ST:Voyager's Threshold ep,
and it was mentioned that they had collected 5 Billion Gigaquads of
information while Tom Paris was doing the Warp Ten test flight.

And I wondered, out loud, "What's a Gigaquad??".

Checking out Memory-Alpha.org,
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Gigaquad#Gigaquad, they give examples of
when the term gigaquad is used, and explain that a Quad is "A quad is a
measurement of information in Federation computers. While Federation
computers still use binary code in some capacity, they also are known to
use trinary code." *Note* trinary code, but no mention of Quad!!

So I'm now guessing that a gigaquad is a billion quads, but has anybody
got a better definition of what a quad is?? i.e. how does it relate to
today's RAM, etc?? Maybe RAM goes 3D, so a gigaquad is 1024 x 1024 x
1024 bits??

Anyone got any idea's??

Daniel

[Bast]

You should call Geek-Squad with this one,....and watch their heads explode.

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

Sorry?? Geek-Squad??

Daniel

[Bast]

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/geeksquadsplashpage.aspx

They pride themselves as being the be-all and end-all, of technology guru's.

[tjc...@gmail.com]

Our base units of data are bits and bytes. 8 bits form one byte. Perhaps a quad is a quadratic bit, which, I assume in theory, would raise a byte to beyond an exponential value above our byte. This hypothesis seems as strong as any explanation provided by any Star Trek dialogue I've heard.

[Wouter Valentijn]

Op 13-4-2016 om 07:37 schreef tjc...@gmail.com:

Or maybe it's short for quadrillion (10^15). But only if you use short
scale. In long scale 1 quadrillion is 10^24

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude

Pure speculation on my part.

--
www.woutervalentijn.net

Abraham Ford: "Nibble on that."

The Walking Dead (s06e09): 'No Way Out'

liam=mail

[Wouter Valentijn]

Op 13-4-2016 om 07:37 schreef tjc...@gmail.com:

BTW, quadratic means to the power of 2. Or squared. 2^2 = 4.
In which a gigaquad could be, if quad is quadratic, (1024^3)^2.

1.1529215e+18

[johnshe...@gmail.com]

A Quad is a 4 Wheeler lmfao

[dusty_m...@hotmail.com]

Oh you idjits! Just ask Captain Janeway; obviously, she would know! (Even better, just ask the Vulcan--Mr. Tuvok, to explain it to your simple minds!)

[mroth...@gmail.com]

OMG! You made me laugh! Geek Squad! I have to fix so much of their mess ups I should send them a profit sharing check...lmao

[supersai...@gmail.com]

Probably a quantum computers form of memory.

[Daniel60]

Possibly ... but I know bugger all about quantum computers or how the
RAM is arranged in them, so I'm still no clearer.

Thanks for trying.

Daniel

[hen...@verizon.net]

On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 5:54:18 AM UTC-7, Dani...@teranews.com wrote:

I agree a quad is a measurement of information in computers and yes the future new code will be binary square code, so gigaquad is a billion square.
Doc Hank

[hen...@verizon.net]

On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 5:54:18 AM UTC-7, Dani...@teranews.com wrote:

[haid...@gmail.com]

Giga is the prefix for billion the term Claude is a Fictional term for a unit of storage based on some other form of compiling data other than the binary system that does not Tertiary but quaternary

[dxc...@yahoo.com]

On Friday, April 6, 2012 at 10:21:49 AM UTC-4, Dani...@teranews.com wrote:
> Bast wrote:
> > Daniel47

It was a joke....r/whoosh.

[Daniel60]

dxc...@yahoo.com wrote on 21/07/2019 11:07 AM:
> On Friday, April 6, 2012 at 10:21:49 AM UTC-4, Dani...@teranews.com wrote:
>> Bast wrote:
>>> Daniel47
>>>> The other day, my sister and I were watching ST:Voyager's Threshold ep,
>>>> and it was mentioned that they had collected 5 Billion Gigaquads of
>>>> information while Tom Paris was doing the Warp Ten test flight.
>>>>
>>>> And I wondered, out loud, "What's a Gigaquad??".
>>>>
>>>> Checking out Memory-Alpha.org,
>>>> http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Gigaquad#Gigaquad, they give examples of
>>>> when the term gigaquad is used, and explain that a Quad is "A quad is a
>>>> measurement of information in Federation computers. While Federation
>>>> computers still use binary code in some capacity, they also are known to
>>>> use trinary code." *Note* trinary code, but no mention of Quad!!
>>>>
>>>> So I'm now guessing that a gigaquad is a billion quads, but has anybody
>>>> got a better definition of what a quad is?? i.e. how does it relate to
>>>> today's RAM, etc?? Maybe RAM goes 3D, so a gigaquad is 1024 x 1024 x
>>>> 1024 bits??
>>>>
>>>> Anyone got any idea's??
>>>

>>> You should call Geek-Squad with this one,....and watch their heads explode.
>>
>> Sorry?? Geek-Squad??
>

> It was a joke....r/whoosh.
>
Yeah!! I figured as much .... but you never know what's out there
now-a-days!!

--
Daniel

[bcorne...@gmail.com]

Trying to explain a QUAD is actually relatively simple.

We already know the prefixes - a kiloquad would be a thousand quads, a megaquad would be a million quads, a gigaquad would be a billion quads, and a teraquad would be a trillion quads.

But what, exactly, is a QUAD? Of course, it's a made-up description of a quantity of data based on the Star Trek Universe, but we have to assume their computers are much more advanced than what we have now. We have BINARY computers, which have two combinations - 0, and 1. Quite simply, a QUAD computer would have four combinations - say 0, 1, 2, and 3.

So instead of a typical "byte" of data holding 256 combinations, a QUAD of data could hold 21846 combinations. Let's break it down:

Computers today use a BINARY system, as we all know. Those have only two states of existence - 0 or 1. If you put 8 of those binary digits together, you get 256 total combinations, or as we know it, one BYTE of information. One character, or one digit. This assumes, as previously stated, only two states of existence - 0 or 1.

If we assume QUAD means that there are FOUR states of existence, the power of modern computers goes way up, exponentially. So, for example:

BINARY
1-2-4-8-16-32-64-128 - each number doubles, and when added up, comes out to 255 (256 if you include everything being Zeroes)

QUAD
1-4-16-64-256-1024-4096-16384 - each number QUADRUPLES, and when added up, comes out to 21,845 (21846 if you include everything being Zeroes).

So to summarize:

BINARY - 8 bits of binary digits gives us 256 combinations.
QUAD - 8 bits of QUAD digits gives us 21846 combinations.

So in theory, if the Star Trek Universe now uses QUAD based computers rather than binary-based computers, whatever amounts to a physical hard-drive or SSD or M2 drive or whatever storage medium you want to equate it to, using the SAME relative amount of PHYSICAL storage means that your actual DATA capacity storage would be roughly 85 times greater than our current computers as we know them today.

I have a terabyte M2 hard-drive in my PC. If that M2 drive were to be QUAD based rather than binary, the same little chip on my board would be able to hold 85.336 Terabytes of information, rather than only 1 Terabyte of information.

A QUAD is simply 85.336 BYTES.

[Daniel60]

Ah!! O.K., I can almost accept your explanation, if ....

In today's Binary, we, basically, have 0V (Zero's) and 5V (Ones)
(Last I read, back in the nineties, a 'Zero' was anything under about
One Volt, a 'One' was anything above about Four Volts, and between One
and Four Volts was an "Indeterminent state")

You could be suggesting four possibly states, something like 0V, 1.8V,
3.5V and 5V.

That might work!

I had been thinking along the lines of .... currently we only use One
dimension of an Integrated Chip, its two sides, but, maybe, if you went
3D, with more connections on either end and the top and bottom of the
chips!!

Buggered if I'd want to design the Circuit board for that, but with
AutoCad .....!

--
Daniel