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Subject:Re: Please take the Granularity Survey From:"Karen E. Black" <kblack_text -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 22 Sep 2003 13:06:02 -0400
I Googled it, and Webopedia.com says granularity is "The extent to which a
system contains separate components (like granules). The more components in
a system -- or the greater the granularity -- the more flexible it is."
Hyperdictionary.com says: "The size of the units of code under consideration
in some context. The term generally refers to the level of detail at which
code is considered, e.g. "You can specify the granularity for this profiling
tool".
"The most common computing use is in parallelism where "fine grain
parallelism" means individual tasks are relatively small in terms of code
size and execution time, "coarse grain" is the opposite. You talk about the
"granularity" of the parallelism.
"The smaller the granularity, the greater the potential for parallelism and
hence speed-up but the greater the overheads of synchronisation and
communication."
Other sites have similar, more complex definitions. "Flexibility" doesn't
have the same connotation.
It's becoming an acceptable IT term (like "instantiate"), but I wouldn't use
it for public consumption. Sorry; I only do surveys if I have a chance of
winning something...
From: JX <techwrl-list-only -at- doitall -dot- com>
I'm having a discussion with colleagues about the term "granularity" with
respect to a cartographic product I'm working on (a programming product --
libraries, APIs, etc). The dictionary didn't help on this issue. Sorry, I
don't think I can replace the word "granularity" for now -- it's a legacy
term.
The question is how to refer to things that people call "granularity levels"
and I'm questioning some terminology an SME is proposing. I'm trying to come
up with the best terminology I can given the current product, and I fear
that some phrases might be less confusing/misleading than others. Just from
hearing these short phrases, I'm curious about *your* expectations or
assumptions with these phrases.
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