Fragmentation
From Free net encyclopedia
(Redirected from Memory fragmentation)
Fragmentation is a term that occurs in several fields and describes a process of something breaking or being divided into pieces (fragments). See also divergence.
- In biology, fragmentation is a form of asexual reproduction where an organism is split into fragments. See fragmentation (biology).
- Habitat fragmentation expresses the process whereby, or the extent to which, the geographic range of a species is broken up into smaller patches.
- In computer storage, there are three related uses of the term fragmentation: external fragmentation, internal fragmentation, and data fragmentation, all related to storage.
- In economics, fragmentation means organization of production in which different stages of production are divided among different suppliers that are located in different countries. Now products traded between firms in different countries are components instead of final products. Final products may be sold to outside the region in which fragmentation happens (East-Asian countries often sell their final products to Europe and USA for example). Producers in less developed countries get positions of production chain that add less value to final product. Their challenge is to "climb upwards" on transnational production chain. Production chains are often vertical hierarchies in which big multinational companies may be those who sell final products and set production standards for "lesser" producers. This kind of fragmentation is an important part of contemporary globalization.
- In music, fragmentation is the use of fragments or the "division of a musical idea (gesture, motive, theme, etc.) into segments." It is used in tonal and atonal music and is used in musical development and closure. Called liquidation by Arnold Schoenberg, it is a common musical technique used by composers including Béla Bartók.
- In literature, fragmentation is a broad term for literary techniques that break up the text or narrative. Fragmentation is characteristic of postmodernism. Related techniques are collage and nonlinear narrative.
- In urban sociology, the absence or the underdevelopment of connections between the society and the groupings of some members of that society on the lines of a common culture, nationality, race, language, occupation, religion, income level, or other common interests. This gap between the concerned group and the rest might be social, indicating poor interrelationships among each other; economical based on structural inequalities; institutional in terms of formal and specific political, occupational, educative or associative organisations and/or geographic implying regional or residential concentration.
- In weaponry, fragmentation is the process by which the casing of an artillery shell, bomb, grenade, etc is shattered by the detonating high explosive filling. The correct technical terminology for these casing pieces is fragments, shortened to frags, although shards or splinters can be used for non-preformed fragments. The fragments, as mentioned previously, can also be preformed and of various shapes (spheres, cubes, etc) and sizes. Preformed fragments are normally held rigidly within some form of matrix, or body until the HE filling is detonated. The resulting high velocity fragments produced by either method are the main lethality mechanisms of these weapons. The word shrapnel is often erroneously used to describe these fragments, but is technically incorrect. True shrapnel can only come from a specific type of shell, the shrapnel shell, which doesn't rely on a high explosive to shatter the casing. A WWI era shrapnel shell uses a small (black) powder charge in the base of the shell to expel the fuze and contained lead or chilled iron shot at a relatively low velocity, 200 m/s (700 ft/s). The expulsion, at a predetermined time and height above the target area, is controlled by a time fuze. Due to their low velocity, the shot, unlike the fragments produced by a detonating HE munition, are really only effective against human targets, they are not effective against material, or armour.
- In waste management, for breaking up waste materials, see Waste management#Reduction.
[edit]
References
- Caplin, William. Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions, p. 10-11. Further reading
- Stein, Deborah (2005). Engaging Music: Essays in Music Analysis, "Introduction to Musical Ambiguity", p.87. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195170105.