gigaword

From giga- +‎ word.

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• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɪɡəˌwɜːrd/
• IPA^(key): /ˈdʒɪɡəˌwɜːrd/

gigaword (plural gigawords)

1. (computing) [from 20th c.] A unit of storage or capacity equal to (or 2³⁰ = 1,073,741,824) words. It is given the "giga" prefix because of the relative proximity of this value to 10⁹.
   • 1969 September, JOHN W. CAMPBELL, editor, Analog‎^[1], volume LXXXIV, number 1, page 98:

     Frank let him have two white mice, a rabbit, and an elderly Airedale, along with a large time slice on the hospital's MEG-computational facilities, a few gigawords of data storage capacity, petty cash for wiring, and a stern warning that "any human 'volunteers' had better be named Robbins, Chun, or Hostler" to avoid repetitions of unfortunate past misadventures with patients who had not quite understood to what they were agreeing.

   • 1977, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development, AGARD Conference Proceedings, number 219, AGARD, pages 23-16:

     It has been calculated that a 100 ps pulse width would be short enough for a 1-Gigaword/second, 6 bit converter and …