bytes and flops?

Question

what is the difference between bytes and flops? like how much bigger is a teraflop than a terabyte? and what is the scale (i.e. mega, kilo, tera, ??

Answer 1

Think of bytes like letters of the alphabet where as flops (floating point operations per second) is how fast you can say the alphabet. This is a crude analogy but hopefully it helps.

Listed below is a great size to explain the various "bytes".

Megabyte 1,048,576 bytes (or characters)
Gigabyte 1,073,741,824 bytes (or characters)
Terabyte 1,099,511,627,776 bytes (or characters)
Petabyte 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes (or characters)
Exabyte 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes (or characters)
Zettabyte 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424 bytes (or characters)
Yottabyte 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes (or characters)



Mike Honeycutt

Answer 2

A byte is a unit of storage, while a flop is a rate at which calculations are performed. So basically byte = space, flop = speed. Two totally different types of measurements, which are not comparable in any way.

Answer 3

Flops and bytes are fundamentally different, so you can't say one is bigger than the other. A byte is a measurement of memory (8 bits). A flop (floating point operation) is a measurement of speed.