Quad (Star Trek)
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A quad is a measurement of data size on the science fiction show Star Trek, including "kiloquads," "gigaquads," and "teraquads."
The exact size of these measurements has never been divulged in the show, but are presumed to be extremely large. A line from Data in the Italian dialogues in "The Measure of a Man" translates this unit as Quadrillions of Bits.
In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Lifesigns", The Doctor states that his program consists of more than 50 million gigaquads of memory.
Another example is in another Star Trek: Voyager episode "Twisted" where Lt. B'Elanna Torres states that 20 million gigaquads of new information has been input into the ships computer.
Given the aforementioned, it is reasonable to assume that a "quad" is 1015 units, but that being unspecified it may like the term "word" in present-day computing wherein the exact size is determined by the machine architecture. If this is the case, a "quad" using a "word-size" of one bit would be more-or-less equal to a present-day "petabit" or 1015 bits.
[edit] Trivia
The Quad is used as a unit of hard disc and memory space in Uplink.
[edit] External links
Quad article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.
