Nanosecond
A nanosecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units equal to one billionth of a second, that is, of a second, or seconds.
The term combines the SI prefix nano- indicating a 1 billionth submultiple of an SI unit and second, the primary unit of time in the SI.
A nanosecond is to one second, as one second is to approximately 31.69 years.
A nanosecond is equal to 1000 picoseconds or microsecond. Time units ranging between 10 and 10 seconds are typically expressed as tens or hundreds of nanoseconds.
Time units of this granularity are commonly found in telecommunications, pulsed lasers, and related aspects of electronics.
Common measurements
- 0.001 nanoseconds – one picosecond
- 0.96 nanoseconds – 100 Gigabit Ethernet Interpacket gap
- 96 nanoseconds – Gigabit Ethernet Interpacket gap
- 1.0 nanosecond – cycle time of an electromagnetic wave with a frequency of 1 GHz.
- 1.0 nanosecond – electromagnetic wavelength of 1 light-nanosecond. Equivalent to 0.3 m radio band.
- 1 nanosecond – time precision in Go
- nanoseconds – time taken by light to travel 1 foot in vacuum.
- nanoseconds – time taken by light to travel 1 metre in vacuum.
- 8 nanoseconds – typical propagation delay of 74HC series logic chips based on HCMOS technology, commonly used for digital electronics in the mid-1980s.
- 10 nanoseconds – one "shake", approximate time of one generation of a nuclear chain reaction with fast neutrons
- 10 nanoseconds – cycle time for frequency 100 MHz, radio wavelength 3 m
- 10 nanoseconds – half-life of lithium-12
- 12 nanoseconds – mean lifetime of a charged K meson
- 20–40 nanoseconds – time of fusion reaction in a hydrogen bomb
- 30 nanoseconds – half-life of carbon-21
- 77 nanoseconds – a sixth
- 100 nanoseconds – cycle time for frequency 10 MHz, radio wavelength 30 m
- 294.4 nanoseconds – half-life of polonium-212
- 333 nanoseconds – cycle time of highest medium wave radio frequency, 3 MHz
- 500 nanoseconds – T1 time of Josephson phase qubit as of May 2005
- nanoseconds – one microsecond