Fabric's way of spreading the capacity units an operation consumes across later 30-second timepoints, which makes throttling less likely. Interactive work is spread over 5 to 64 minutes and background work over a full day.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Smoothing in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Capacity
A reserved block of compute for a tenant whose size is fixed by its SKU; Fabric F SKUs express it in capacity units (CUs). Workspaces assigned to it unlock features like Copilot, and from F64 upwards people with free licences can view Power BI content.
- OVER
Gives a T-SQL window function its window: PARTITION BY, ORDER BY and, if wanted, a ROWS or RANGE frame. Rankings and running totals can then be worked out while every row is kept.
Related terms
- Autoscale Billing for Spark
An opt-in way of paying for Spark (Learn also calls it on-demand billing) where jobs use separate serverless compute rather than drawing on the Fabric capacity, and you pay only while jobs are active, capped by a maximum CU setting. Smoothing and bursting play no part, and at the cap new batch jobs wait in a queue while interactive ones are throttled.
- Overage
Fabric capacity consumption, after smoothing, that exceeds what the SKU allows in a timepoint. Any overage left after the 10-minute throttling window carries forward and is paid off by later idle time; alternatively, capacity overage billing at triple the usual rate avoids throttling.