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redundancymore about redundancy

redundancy


  3  definitions  found 
 
  From  Webster's  Revised  Unabridged  Dictionary  (1913)  [web1913]: 
 
  Redundance  \Re*dun"dance\  (r?*d?n"dans),  Redundancy 
  \Re*dun"dan*cy\  (-dan*s?),  n.  [L.  redundantia:  cf  F. 
  redondance.] 
  1.  The  quality  or  state  of  being  redundant;  superfluity; 
  superabundance;  excess. 
 
  2.  That  which  is  redundant  or  in  excess;  anything  superfluous 
  or  superabundant. 
 
  Labor  .  .  .  throws  off  redundacies  --Addison. 
 
  3.  (Law)  Surplusage  inserted  in  a  pleading  which  may  be 
  rejected  by  the  court  without  impairing  the  validity  of 
  what  remains. 
 
  From  WordNet  r  1.6  [wn]: 
 
  redundancy 
  n  1:  repetition  of  messages  to  reduce  the  probability  of  errors 
  in  transmission 
  2:  the  attribute  of  being  superfluous  and  unneeded;  "the  use  of 
  industrial  robots  created  redundancy  among  workers"  [syn: 
  {redundance}] 
  3:  (electronics)  a  system  design  that  duplicates  components  to 
  provide  alternatives  in  case  one  component  fails 
  4:  repetition  of  an  act  needlessly 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  redundancy 
 
  1.    The  provision  of  multiple  interchangeable 
  components  to  perform  a  single  function  in  order  to  cope  with 
  failures  and  errors.  Redundancy  normally  applies  primarily  to 
  hardware.  For  example,  one  might  install  two  or  even  three 
  computers  to  do  the  same  job.  There  are  several  ways  these 
  could  be  used  They  could  all  be  active  all  the  time  thus 
  giving  extra  performance  through  {parallel  processing}  as  well 
  as  extra  availability;  one  could  be  active  and  the  others 
  simply  monitoring  its  activity  so  as  to  be  ready  to  take  over 
  if  it  failed  ("warm  standby");  the  spares"  could  be  kept 
  turned  off  and  only  switched  on  when  needed  ("cold  standby"). 
  Another  common  form  of  hardware  redundancy  is  {disk 
  mirroring}. 
 
  Redundancy  can  also  be  used  to  detect  and  recover  from  errors, 
  either  in  hardware  or  software.  A  well  known  example  of  this 
  is  the  {cyclic  redundancy  check}  which  adds  redundant  data  to 
  a  block  in  order  to  detect  corruption  during  storage  or 
  transmission.  If  the  cost  of  errors  is  high  enough,  e.g.  in  a 
  {safety-critical  system},  redundancy  may  be  used  in  both 
  hardware  AND  software  with  three  separate  computers  programmed 
  by  three  separate  teams  and  some  system  to  check  that  they  all 
  produce  the  same  answer,  or  some  kind  of  majority  voting 
  system. 
 
  2.    The  proportion  of  a  message's  gross 
  information  content  that  can  be  eliminated  without  losing 
  essential  information. 
 
  Technically,  redundancy  is  one  minus  the  ratio  of  the  actual 
  uncertainty  to  the  maximum  uncertainty.  This  is  the  fraction 
  of  the  structure  of  the  message  which  is  determined  not  by  the 
  choice  of  the  sender,  but  rather  by  the  accepted  statistical 
  rules  governing  the  choice  of  the  symbols  in  question. 
 
  [Shannon  and  Weaver,  1948,  p.  l3] 
 
  [Better  explanation?] 
 
  (1995-05-09) 
 
 




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