Zetta is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of 10^21 or 1000000000000000000000.
The collective Bitcoin mining hardware is over 64 Exaflops in computing in October, 2013.
It is likely closing in on 100 exaflops now.
One of the leading makers of bitcoin mining rigs is pre-selling $12,995 20 nanometer ASICs. They will be over 5 times the speed of our first Jupiter release (28 nanometer asics) and over 30% more energy efficient.
The KNCminer Jupiter rig released in October performs 550 gigahashes per second.
The total compute was 1.9 petahashes per second in October and we are now at about 7 petahashes per second.
A petahash is converted to 10 about exaflops.
Bitcoin.sipa.be tracks bitcoin computing and other metrics.
Blockchain.info has some bitcoin statistics.
The new bitcoin 20 nm mining rigs will boost the compute power up by over 5 times and two to three times as much mining gear would get the Bitcoin computing to 100 petahashes or one zettaflop.
It would also happen later in 2014 with another doubling in the performance of Bitcoin mining equipment.
This also indicates that dedicated ASIC servers could also be produced for a zettaflop network if there was motivation to solve similar computing problems that would be solvable with ASIC hardware.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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