gigaword

plural gigawords

1. computingA 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.First known use 20th c.

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

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

   1 more example

   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.

   1969 September, JOHN W. CAMPBELL, editor, Analog, volume LXXXIV, number 1, page 98