Space–time tradeoff

A space–time trade-off, also known as time–memory trade-off or the algorithmic space-time continuum in computer science is a case where an algorithm or program trades increased space usage with decreased time. Here, space refers to the data storage consumed in performing a given task (RAM, HDD, etc), and time refers to the time consumed in performing a given task (computation time or response time).

The utility of a given space–time tradeoff is affected by related fixed and variable costs (of, e.g., CPU speed, storage space), and is subject to diminishing returns.