Granularity
Granularity is the extent to which a system is broken down into small parts, either the system itself or its description or observation. It is the extent to which a larger entity is subdivided. For example, a yard broken into inches has finer granularity than a yard broken into feet.
Coarse-grained systems consist of fewer, larger components than
fine-grained systems; a
coarse-grained description of a system regards large subcomponents while a
fine-grained description regards smaller components of which the larger ones are composed. The terms
granularity,
coarse, and
fine are relative, 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, etc. The terms
fine and
coarse are used consistently across fields, but the term
granularity itself is not. For example, in investing,
more granularity refers to more positions of smaller size, while photographic film that is
more granular has fewer and larger chemical "grains."...