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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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