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scalability


  1  definition  found 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  scalability 
 
  How  well  a  solution  to  some  problem  will  work  when  the  size  of 
  the  problem  increases. 
 
  For  example,  a  central  {server}  of  some  kind  with  ten 
  {client}s  may  perform  adequately  but  with  a  thousand  clients 
  it  might  fail  to  meet  response  time  requirements.  In  this 
  case,  the  average  response  time  probably  scales  linearly  with 
  the  number  of  clients,  we  say  it  has  a  {complexity}  of  O(N) 
  ("order  N")  but  there  are  problems  with  other  complexities. 
  E.g.  if  we  want  N  nodes  in  a  network  to  be  able  to  communicate 
  with  each  other  we  could  connect  each  one  to  a  central 
  exchange,  requiring  O(N)  wires  or  we  could  provide  a  direct 
  connection  between  each  pair,  requiring  O(N^2)  wires  (the 
  exact  number  or  formula  is  not  usually  so  important  as  the 
  highest  power  of  N  involved). 
 
  (1995-03-29) 
 
 




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