How Do We Measure It? – Second – Millisecond (ms or msec) is (10-3) one thousandth of a second – Microsecond (μs or mu) is (10-6) one millionth of a second – Nanosecond (ns or nsec) is (10-9) one billionth of a second
– Picosecond is (10 –12) one trillionth of a second – Femtosecond is (10-15) one quadrillionth of a second – Attosecond is (10-18) one quintillionth of a second – Zeptosecond is (10-21) one sextillionth of a second – Yoctosecond is (10-24) one septillionth
How do we measure time? Millisecond (ms or msec): Commonly used in measuring the time to read to, or write from, a hard disk or a CD-ROM player. Also used to measure packet travel time on the Internet.
Microsecond (μs or μsec):
Commonly used to measure intra-switch latency, cache latency, and the time it takes light to traverse an optical link or electricity to traverse a copper link. Nanosecond (ns or nsec):
Common measurement of the read or write access time to random access memory (RAM).
Femtosecond: Measurement sometimes used in laser technology.