glossary category

See electrolyte, gelled

A hardware or software setup that translates between two dissimilar protocols, or commonly, any mechanism for providing access to another system

A small cock fitted to a pressure or other measurement gage to allow for isolation of the gage for purposes of maintenance

The complete documentation of a benchmark's results along with the relevant system and benchmark configuration information. There should be sufficient detail and coverage for someone else to be able to reproduce the tests. Each result available on this server has such a disclosure available

In information technology, a footprint is the amount of space a particular unit of hardware or software occupies. Marketing brochures frequently state that a new hardware control unit or desktop display has a "smaller footprint," meaning that it occupies less space in the closet or on a desk. More recently, the term is used to describe microcomponents that take less space inside a computer

Amount of some quantity flowing across a given area (often a unit area perpendicular to the flow) per unit time. The quantity may be, for example, mass or volume of a fluid, electromagnetic energy, or number of particles

A family of perfluorinated liquids from 3M offering unique properties ideally suited to the demanding requirements of electronics manufacturing, heat transfer, and other specialized applications

A class of arithmetic, typically used in scientific applications. Actually much like the values displayed by a calculator, the values can range from very large down to minute fractions but only the first several digits are available. Floating point is commonly used when the values being calculated can be very large - into the billions - or else involve fractions, e.g., the number of miles from earth to the next galaxy (billions and billions) or the precise temperature of a feverish baby (101.8). Floating point is the alternative to integer.

Optimum voltage level at which a battery string gives maximum life and full capacity

Software that has been encoded onto read-only memory (ROM). Firmware is a combination of software and hardware. The code or data programmed into ROMs, PROMs, EPROMs, and flash memory is firmware