tera-
In units of measurement, a factor of 1012, a million million.
[Greek teras, monster.]
This is one of the standard SI (Système International) multiples (see the entry Words for multiples). It occurs in terms such as terahertz, a frequency of a million million cycles per second, and terawatt, a million million watts. In computing, it strictly has a sense of 240, but in terms such as terabyte it often means a million million bytes. The unit of computing speed, the teraflop, is always equal to one million million floating-point operations per second.
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