Granular
Granularity (also called graininess), the condition of existing in granules or grains, refers to the extent to which a material or system is composed of distinguishable pieces. It can either refer to the extent to which a larger entity is subdivided, or the extent to which groups of smaller indistinguishable entities have joined together to become larger distinguishable entities. Precision and ambiguity Coarse-grained materials or systems have fewer, larger discrete components than fine-grained materials or systems. * A coarse-grained description of a system regards large subcomponents. * A fine-grained description regards smaller components of which the larger ones are composed. The concepts granularity, coarseness, and fineness are relative; and are used when comparing systems or descriptions of systems. An example of increasingly fine granularity: a list of nations in the United Nations, a list of all states/provinces in those nations, a list of all cities in those states, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Granular Material
A granular material is a conglomeration of discrete solid, macroscopic particles characterized by a loss of energy whenever the particles interact (the most common example would be friction when grains collide). The constituents that compose granular material are large enough such that they are not subject to thermal motion fluctuations. Thus, the lower size limit for grains in granular material is about 1 μm. On the upper size limit, the physics of granular materials may be applied to ice floes where the individual grains are icebergs and to asteroid belts of the Solar System with individual grains being asteroids. Some examples of granular materials are snow, nuts, coal, sand, rice, coffee, corn flakes, fertilizer, and bearing balls. Research into granular materials is thus directly applicable and goes back at least to Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, whose law of friction was originally stated for granular materials. Granular materials are commercially important in applicat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Granularity (parallel Computing)
In parallel computing, granularity (or grain size) of a task is a measure of the amount of work (or computation) which is performed by that task. Another definition of granularity takes into account the communication overhead between multiple processors or processing elements. It defines granularity as the ratio of computation time to communication time, wherein, computation time is the time required to perform the computation of a task and communication time is the time required to exchange data between processors. . If T_\mathrm is the computation time and T_\mathrm denotes the communication time, then the Granularity G of a task can be calculated as: ::G=\frac Granularity is usually measured in terms of the number of instructions executed in a particular task. Alternately, granularity can also be specified in terms of the execution time of a program, combining the computation time and communication time. Types of parallelism Depending on the amount of work which is performed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Granular Computing
Granular computing (GrC) is an emerging computing paradigm of information processing that concerns the processing of complex information entities called "information granules", which arise in the process of data abstraction and derivation of knowledge from information or data. Generally speaking, information granules are collections of entities that usually originate at the numeric level and are arranged together due to their similarity, functional or physical adjacency, indistinguishability, coherency, or the like. At present, granular computing is more a ''theoretical perspective'' than a coherent set of methods or principles. As a theoretical perspective, it encourages an approach to data that recognizes and exploits the knowledge present in data at various levels of resolution or scales. In this sense, it encompasses all methods which provide flexibility and adaptability in the resolution at which knowledge or information is extracted and represented. Types of granulation ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Film Grain
Film grain or granularity is the random optical texture of processed photographic film due to the presence of small particles of a metallic silver, or dye clouds, developed from silver halide that have received enough photons. While film grain is a function of such particles (or dye clouds) it is not the same thing as such. It is an optical effect, the magnitude of which (amount of grain) depends on both the film stock and the definition at which it is observed. It can be objectionably noticeable in an over-enlarged film photograph. RMS granularity Granularity, or RMS granularity, is a numerical quantification of density non-uniformity, equal to the root-mean-square (rms) fluctuations in optical density, measured with a microdensitometer with a 0.048 mm (48-micrometre) diameter circular aperture, on a film area that has been exposed and normally developed to a mean density of 1.0 D (that is, it transmits 10% of light incident on it). Granularity is sometimes quoted as "di ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Reconfigurable Computing
Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with very flexible high speed computing fabrics like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The principal difference when compared to using ordinary microprocessors is the ability to make substantial changes to the datapath itself in addition to the control flow. On the other hand, the main difference from custom hardware, i.e. application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is the possibility to adapt the hardware during runtime by "loading" a new circuit on the reconfigurable fabric. History The concept of reconfigurable computing has existed since the 1960s, when Gerald Estrin's paper proposed the concept of a computer made of a standard processor and an array of "reconfigurable" hardware. The main processor would control the behavior of the reconfigurable hardware. The latter would then be tailored to perform a specific task, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Data Path Unit
Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with very flexible high speed computing fabrics like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The principal difference when compared to using ordinary microprocessors is the ability to make substantial changes to the datapath itself in addition to the control flow. On the other hand, the main difference from custom hardware, i.e. application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is the possibility to adapt the hardware during runtime by "loading" a new circuit on the reconfigurable fabric. History The concept of reconfigurable computing has existed since the 1960s, when Gerald Estrin's paper proposed the concept of a computer made of a standard processor and an array of "reconfigurable" hardware. The main processor would control the behavior of the reconfigurable hardware. The latter would then be tailored to perform a specific task, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Object-oriented Programming
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of procedures (often known as ''methods''). A common feature of objects is that procedures (or methods) are attached to them and can access and modify the object's data fields. In this brand of OOP, there is usually a special name such as or used to refer to the current object. In OOP, computer programs are designed by making them out of objects that interact with one another. OOP languages are diverse, but the most popular ones are class-based, meaning that objects are instances of classes, which also determine their types. Many of the most widely used programming languages (such as C++, Java, Python, etc.) are multi-paradigm and they support object-oriented programming to a greater or lesser degree, typically in combination with imper ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Computational Overhead
In computer science, overhead is any combination of excess or indirect computation time, memory, bandwidth, or other resources that are required to perform a specific task. It is a special case of engineering overhead. Overhead can be a deciding factor in software design, with regard to structure, error correction, and feature inclusion. Examples of computing overhead may be found in Object Oriented Programming (OOP), functional programming, data transfer, and data structures. Software design Choice of implementation A programmer/software engineer may have a choice of several algorithms, encodings, data types or data structures, each of which have known characteristics. When choosing among them, their respective overhead should also be considered. Tradeoffs In software engineering, overhead can influence the decision whether or not to include features in new products, or indeed whether to fix bugs. A feature that has a high overhead may not be included – or needs a big ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Object (computer Science)
In computer science, an object can be a variable, a data structure, a function, or a method. As regions of memory, they contain value and are referenced by identifiers. In the object-oriented programming paradigm, ''object'' can be a combination of variables, functions, and data structures; in particular in class-based variations of the paradigm it refers to a particular instance of a class. In the relational model of database management, an object can be a table or column, or an association between data and a database entity (such as relating a person's age to a specific person). Object-based languages An important distinction in programming languages is the difference between an object-oriented language and an object-based language. A language is usually considered object-based if it includes the basic capabilities for an object: identity, properties, and attributes. A language is considered object-oriented if it is object-based and also has the capability of polymorphism, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Method (computer Science)
A method in object-oriented programming (OOP) is a procedure associated with a message and an object. An object consists of ''state data'' and ''behavior''; these compose an ''interface'', which specifies how the object may be utilized by any of its various consumers. A method is a behavior of an object parametrized by a consumer. Data is represented as properties of the object, and behaviors are represented as methods. For example, a Window object could have methods such as open and close, while its state (whether it is open or closed at any given point in time) would be a property. In class-based programming, methods are defined within a class, and objects are instances of a given class. One of the most important capabilities that a method provides is ''method overriding'' - the same name (e.g., area) can be used for multiple different kinds of classes. This allows the sending objects to invoke behaviors and to delegate the implementation of those behaviors to the receiving o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Scalability
Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a package delivery system is scalable because more packages can be delivered by adding more delivery vehicles. However, if all packages had to first pass through a single warehouse for sorting, the system would not be as scalable, because one warehouse can handle only a limited number of packages. In computing, scalability is a characteristic of computers, networks, algorithms, networking protocols, programs and applications. An example is a search engine, which must support increasing numbers of users, and the number of topics it indexes. Webscale is a computer architectural approach that brings the capabilities of large-scale cloud computing companies into enterprise data centers. In mathematics, scalability mostly refers to closure u ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Subroutine
In computer programming, a function or subroutine is a sequence of program instructions that performs a specific task, packaged as a unit. This unit can then be used in programs wherever that particular task should be performed. Functions may be defined within programs, or separately in libraries that can be used by many programs. In different programming languages, a function may be called a routine, subprogram, subroutine, method, or procedure. Technically, these terms all have different definitions, and the nomenclature varies from language to language. The generic umbrella term ''callable unit'' is sometimes used. A function is often coded so that it can be started several times and from several places during one execution of the program, including from other functions, and then branch back (''return'') to the next instruction after the ''call'', once the function's task is done. The idea of a subroutine was initially conceived by John Mauchly during his work on ENIAC, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |