Quad (Star Trek)

For other uses of the term, see Quad.

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.

Although it originated on the show Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the technical manual by the same name, the term is more often used in the series Star Trek: Voyager. Several examples include:

• In "Lifesigns", The Doctor states that his program consists of more than 50 million gigaquads of memory.
• In "Twisted", Lt. B'Elanna Torres states that 20 million gigaquads of new information has been input into the ship's computer.
• In "Threshold", Lt. B'Elanna Torres states that 5 billion gigaquads of new information has been input into the ship's computer after downloading it from the shuttle that reached WarP 10 with Tom Paris.
• In "Someone to Watch Over Me", Seven of Nine collected 30,000 gigaquads of information on the subject of romance.
• In "Drone", the Borg drone "One" states that he has assimilated 47 billion teraquads of information.

Given the aforementioned, it is reasonable to assume that a "quad" is 10¹⁵ units, but that being unspecified it May Be 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. However, The Star Trek Encyclopedia notes that the term "[kilo]quad" was specifically intended to have no direct real-world equivalent whatsoever so that subsequent advances in data capacity could never "catch up" with that of the Star Trek universe's imaginary technology and thus render the term anachronistic.

Some have speculated that a "quad" could be a quaternary computer language, similar to the currently used binary computer code. Since binary digits are made up of values of Either 0 or 1, quad digits could hypothetically be made up of 4 values. These would be basic units of information storage and communication in digital computing and digital information theory.

Evidence contrary to the quaternary-base computer language is suggested in the Star Trek: Voyager episode Hope and Fear, where in Captain Janeway asks an alien counterpart to translate a Starfleet datastream, citing his experience in "trinary syntax", suggesting a three-state operating architecture.

Other Uses

The Quad is used as a unit of data size in the computer game Uplink. It is unknown whether it corresponds to the same value as the unit used in Star Trek.

External links

it:Quad (Star Trek)