How big is a "Quad" in Federation Computer Science?

[Ithekro]

The Q have been playing Spore since they became Q-like. They've even haxed it to and added mods, and don't have to police there home systems anymore.

 

[Santaman]

They left it as vague as possible, I read somewhere that they invented the term so to avoid normal terms, in the 80's a Gigabyte would be HUGE nowadays it is peanuts to avoid having the show show its age in that way they just made up the Quad, even now after all these years it sounds "advanced"

 

[BK613]

since the observable universe can only hold perhaps 10^123 bits of information, the UFP is going to need a few more universes or else Star Trek already takes place in a series of holographic universes. (that explains Q.. bored console users)

Pockets of subspace

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

They left it as vague as possible, I read somewhere that they invented the term so to avoid normal terms, in the 80's a Gigabyte would be HUGE nowadays it is peanuts to avoid having the show show its age in that way they just made up the Quad, even now after all these years it sounds "advanced"

Yup, and that they did accomplish.

That being stated, trying to fill in missing cannon info is part of Fandom / Fanon.

 

[at Quark's]

Who's to say that a quad can even be converted into something on our scales?

This is 400 years into the future. For all we know there have been several scientific revolutions, and one or more of them lead to a substantial different definition of what information actually is. Perhaps theirs is far more sophisticated than something the like of "the number of bits".

(Still, in some cases the old scale apparently has still use, such as Data expressing his memory capacity in bits).

 

[Christopher]

I find it a mildly amusing coincidence (extremely mildly) that "quad" was previously used as a term for sentient computers and robots in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century from 1979-81. The AI character Dr. Theopolis was a "quad," and his robot pal Twiki who carried him around was an "ambuquad." (Who wasn't all that ambulatory, considering that he needed to be carried up and down stairs. Which makes me wonder why a society that had so many ambuquads and wheeled quads roaming about didn't build its facilities with ramps.)

 

[matthunter]

I've never been able to see the term the same way since the Mass Effect games...

 

[comics1996]

As with stardates, it was specifically intended not to convey any meaningful numerical information, because when they tried using real units to predict 24th-century computer capacity, it ended up being laughable when real computers caught up with their estimates in just a few years. So if we, as fans, try to estimate how big a quad is now, our estimates will probably be just as ridiculous and just as quickly rendered obsolete. Some things in fiction are best left intentionally vague.

Man will also probably take that as a challenge to catch up faster then the time star trek has set for computers.

 

[Christopher]

Man will also probably take that as a challenge to catch up faster then the time star trek has set for computers.

My point was that we've already long since surpassed their predictions. Indeed, we did it just a few years later, which was why they stopped trying to make specific predictions and resorted to gibberish units like "quads."