Nanosecond
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nanosecond
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A nanosecond (ns) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one billionth of a second, that is, 1/1000000000 of a second, or 10−9 seconds.
A nanosecond is to one second, as one second is to approximately 31.69 years.
A nanosecond is equal to 1000 picoseconds or 1/1000 microsecond. Time units ranging between 10−8 and 10−7 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.
Contents
• See also
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Common measurements
• 0.001 nanoseconds – one picosecond
• 0.96 nanoseconds – 100 Gigabit Ethernet Interpacket gap
• 96 nanoseconds – Gigabit Ethernet Interpacket gap
• 1.0 nanosecond – electromagnetic wavelength of 1 light-nanosecond. Equivalent to 0.3 m radio band.
• 1.016703362164 nanoseconds (by definition) – time taken by light to travel 1 foot in vacuum.cite-ref-4[n 1]
• 3.3356409519815 nanoseconds (by definition) – time taken by light to travel 1 metre in vacuum.cite-ref-bipm21-5-0[4]
• 8 nanoseconds – typical propagation delay of 74HC series logic chips based on HCMOS technology, commonly used for digital electronics in the mid-1980s.cite-ref-6[5]
• 10 nanoseconds – one "shake", (as in a "shake of a lamb's tail") approximate time of one generation of a nuclear chain reaction with fast neutrons
• 10 nanoseconds – half-life of lithium-12
• 20–40 nanoseconds – time of fusion reaction in a hydrogen bomb
• 30 nanoseconds – half-life of carbon-21
• 77 nanoseconds – a sixth (a 60th of a 60th of a 60th of a 60th of a second)
• 294.4 nanoseconds – half-life of polonium-212cite-ref-nubase2020-8-0[7]
• 333 nanoseconds – cycle time of highest medium wave radio frequency, 3 MHz
• 500 nanoseconds – T1 time of Josephson phase qubit (see also Qubit) as of May 2005
• 1000 nanoseconds – one microsecond
See also
References
Notes
cite-note-4n 1. ↑ By definition of the "foot" as exactly 1/3 yards, and of the international yard as "exactly 0.9144 metres", and of the metre (SI unit) defined by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures as the "length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second". The time taken by light to travel 1 foot in vacuum is therefore (1/299792458) × (0.9144/3) seconds, or 1.016703362164 nanoseconds.
Citations
cite-note-11. ↑ "time package - time - Go Packages". pkg.go.dev. Retrieved 2025-01-29.
cite-note-22. ↑ "It's Go Time on Linux". The Cloudflare Blog. Archived from the original on 2024-10-05. Retrieved 2025-01-29. time.Now() now gets real nanosecond resolution on supported systems
cite-note-33. ↑ "Comprehensive Guide to Dates and Times in Go". Boot.dev Blog. 2021-05-17. Retrieved 2025-01-29. The default time.Time type represents an instant in time with nanosecond precision
cite-note-65. ↑ citerefphilips-semiconductorsPhilips Semiconductors. "74HC-T-U-User-Guide" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
cite-note-76. ↑ citerefberingerBeringer, J. "K±" (PDF). pdg.lbl.gov.
External links