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Definition: scale


(1) To resize a device, object or system. With regard to increases, "scale vertically" or "scale up" refers to expanding a single machine's capability. To "scale horizontally" or "scale out" refers to adding more machines.

With regard to decreases, the term is often used with cutting-edge chip technologies. For example, "this memory scales with CMOS" means that the memory architecture takes advantage of the increasing miniaturization in CMOS chip fabrication by becoming smaller as well. See at scale, upconvert and scalable.

(2) To increase. The term is widely used to refer to expanding a system, quite often a website or Web-based application that is quickly gaining popularity. See at scale, blitzscaling, scalable and scaler.

(3) To move with. The phrase "the image scales with the window" means that as an on-screen window is dragged by the user to a larger or smaller frame size, the image inside continuously expands or contracts to fit the changing frame.

(4) To change the representation of a quantity in order to bring it into prescribed limits of another range. For example, values such as 1249, 876, 523, -101 and -234 might need to be scaled into a range from -5 to +5.

(5) To designate the position of the decimal point in a fixed or floating point number.

(6) To increase or decrease the size of a digital image.

(7) A large size. For example, the "efficiencies of scale" means the economies derived from expansion.




Scaling Up and Down
Enlarging an image adds pixels, and quality software can produce a decent result for small increases. However, no matter how good the algorithms, a large increase softens the new image. In addition, the original sharpness cannot be brought back as this pixel example shows. See dithering.