| Actual Time | Operation | Human Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 1 ns | L1 Cache | 1 second |
| 4 ns | L2 Cache | 4 seconds |
| 16 ns | L3 Cache | 16 seconds |
| 50 ns | GPU VRAM | 50 seconds |
| 100 ns | System DRAM | 1 minute, 40 seconds |
| 100 μs | NVME SSD seek time | 1 day, 4 hours |
| 1 ms | EBS seek time | 11 days, 14 hours |
| 10 ms | Hard Disk seek time | 3 months, 26 days |
| 500 μs | Network ping (same Availability Zone) | 5 days, 19 hours |
| 2 ms | Network ping (different Availability Zone) | 23 days, 3 hours |
| 5 ms | S3 lookup (same region) | 1 month, 28 days |
| 30 ms | Cross Region Ping (Auckland -> Sydney) | 11 months, 17 days |
| 180 ms | Cross Region Ping (London -> Virginia) | 5 years, 8 months |
| 350 ms | Cross Region Ping (Auckland -> Stockholm) | 11 years, 1 month |
Scaling Factor: 1 nanosecond = 1 second (1 billion times larger)
Conversion Process:
1. Convert all times to nanoseconds
2. Multiply by scaling factor (1 billion)
3. Convert result to human-readable units
Examples:
• L2 Cache: 4 ns → 4 × 1 second = 4 seconds
• DRAM: 100 ns → 100 × 1 second = 100 seconds = 1.67 minutes
• NVME SSD: 100 μs = 100,000 ns → 100,000 seconds ÷ 86,400 = 1.16 days
• Hard Disk: 10 ms = 10,000,000 ns → 10,000,000 seconds ÷ 86,400 = 115.7 days ≈ 4 months
• Cross-region: 350 ms = 350,000,000 ns → 350,000,000 seconds ÷ 31,536,000 = 11.1 years
Unit Conversions:
• 1 microsecond (μs) = 1,000 nanoseconds
• 1 millisecond (ms) = 1,000,000 nanoseconds
• 1 day = 86,400 seconds
• 1 year = 31,536,000 seconds