A chunk is a fragment of information which is used in many multimedia
file formats
A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...
, such as
PNG,
IFF
In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, "if and only if" (often shortened as "iff") is paraphrased by the biconditional, a logical connective between statements. The biconditional is true in two cases, where either both ...
,
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...
and
AVI.
Each chunk contains a
header which indicates some parameters (e.g. the type of chunk, comments, size etc.). Following the header is a variable area containing data, which is decoded by the program from the parameters in the header.
Chunks may also be fragments of information which are downloaded or managed by
P2P programs.
In
distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers.
The components of a distributed system commu ...
, a chunk is a set of data which is sent to a
processor or one of the parts of a computer for processing.
See also
*
Chunking (computing)
In computer programming, chunking has multiple meanings.
In memory management
Typical modern software systems allocate memory dynamically from structures known as heaps. Calls are made to heap-management routines to allocate and free memory. Hea ...
, a procedure for memory allocation or message transmission in computer programming
References
Data unit
{{software-eng-stub
ar:كتلة (معلومات)
ca:Chunk
es:Chunk
eo:Chunk