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- ABI
- (A)pplication (B)inary (I)nterface.
API - (A)pplication (P)rogramming (I)nterface.
bandwidth - The term is often used erroneously to mean data rate or capacity - the
amount of data that is, or can be, sent through a given communications circuit
per second.
DDR - (D)ouble (D)ata (R)ate-Synchronous DRAM, a type of
SDRAM that supports data transfers on both edges of each clock cycle (the
rising and falling edges), effectively doubling the memory chip's data throughput.
DDR-SDRAM consumes less power and is also called SDRAM II.
ext2 - EXT2 is Second (EXT)ended file system. It is the de facto standard
file system on Linux. Advantages: fast and stable. Disadvatage: not a journalling
file system. An EXT3 offers journalling.
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IDE - (I)ntelligent (D)rive (E)lectronics or (I)ntegrated
(D)rive (E) lectronics, depending on who you ask. An IDE interface
is an interface for mass storage devices in which the controller is integrated
into the disk or CD-ROM drive.
KVM - (K)eyboard-(V)ideo(M)ouse. A switch that permits multiple
machines to share one keyboard, one monitor, and one mouse.
latency - Time delay. The time it takes for a packet to cross a network connection,
from sender to receiver. Two of the most important parameters of a communications
channel are its latency, which should be low, and its bandwidth, which should
be high.
L1 - Level one cache. A small, fast cache memory inside the microprocessor chip.
L2 - Level two cache. Cache memory that is external to the microprocessor. In
general, L2 cache memory, also called the secondary cache, resides on a separate
chip from the microprocessor chip, although more and more microprocessors
are including L2 caches into their architectures.
Mbps - (M)ega(b)its (p)er (s)econd. A measure of data
transfer speed. Networks, for example, are generally measured in Mbps.
MIMD - (M)ultiple-(I)nstruction (M)ultiple (D)ata.
One of the four classifications of parallel computers. In 1966, Michael Flynn
classified systems according to the number of instruction streams and the
number of data streams. The other three classifications:
- SISD: (S)ingle-(I)nstruction (S)ingle (D)ata.
- SIMD: (S)ingle-(I)nstruction (M)ultiple (D)ata.
- MISD: (M)ultiple-(I)nstruction (S)ingle (D)ata.
MPI - MPI is a message-passing library specification.
- MPI permits programs with separate address spaces to synchronize with
one another and move data from the address space of one process to that
of another by sending and receiving messages.
- MPI is not a language but rather a collection of subroutines and their
arguments.
- MPI is a specification created by the MPI Forum, a group of vendors,
computer scientists, and users. The first standard, released in 1994,
is referred to as MPI-1. A set of extensions, referred to as MPI-2, were
released after MPI-1 was in wide use. MPI refers to both MPI-1 and MPI-2.
NFS - (N)etwork (F)ile (S)ystem. It is a means of connecting
disks that are mounted to a remote system to the local system as if they were
physically connected.
NIC - (N)etwork (I)nterface (C)ard. An expansion board inserted
into a computer so the computer can be connected to a network. Most NICs are
designed for a particular type of network, protocol, and media, although some
can serve multiple networks.
SCI - (S)calable (C)oherent (I)nterface. An IEEE standard
originally designed to provide for cache-coherent shared-memory systems.
TCP - (T)ransmission (C)ontrol (P)rotocol. TCP is one of
the main protocols in TCP/IP networks. Whereas the IP protocol deals only
with packets, TCP enables two hosts to establish a connection and exchange
streams of data. TCP guarantees delivery of data and also guarantees that
packets will be delivered in the same order in which they were sent.
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