Unit 8: Vocabulary

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acronym
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an abbreviation; a way of writing a longer string of words more concisely
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"IT is an acronym for Information Technology."
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bandwidth
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a measurement of the capacity of data which can be moved between two points in a given period of time
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"The website performed very poorly because it was graphically heavy and required more bandwidth than was available."
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benchmark
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a measurement or standard that serves as a point of reference by which process performance is measured
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"The magazine article used PCMark 7 scores as a benchmark for computer performance."
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bit (binary digit)
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the smallest unit of storage; normally referred to as a '1' or '0'
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"The DBA "flipped a bit" in the database, changing a value from a 0 to 1."
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byte (binary term)
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8 bits
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"One byte of data is enough memory to hold a single ASCII character."
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fault tolerance
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the ability of a system component to fail without causing the entire system to shut down; this is often accomplished with redundancy
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"Due to low fault tolerances in the new gaming console's GPU, the manufacturer had to issue a total recall."
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FLOPS (floating point operations per second)
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a common measurement of computer speed dealing with decimal calculations in a given amount of time
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"The more FLOPS a computer can do, the faster it is."
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frequency
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the number of cycles undergone per unit (time of a sound wave), most often measured in hertz
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"The new processor ran at a much higher frequency than the one it replaced, going from 1.8 GHZ up to 4 GHZ."
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G (giga)
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one billion
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"The word giga originally comes from the Greek word for 'giant'."
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GB (gigabyte)
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one billion bytes
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"Modern hard drives can store 500 gigabytes of data or more."
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GHz (gigahertz)
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one billion hertz
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"How long will it be before the first 5-gigahertz processors become affordable?"
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Hz (hertz)
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an internationally used frequency unit; equals one cycle per second
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" A human being can hear sound waves from 20Hz to 20,000Hz."
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IPS (instructions per second)
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a very raw measurement of computer processor speed
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"IPS is a base measurement of computer speed often expressed in millions (MIPS)."
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K (kilo)
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one thousand
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"A kilobyte is 1024 bytes."
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logarithm
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the power to which a number is raised -- the exponent; example: log 10^2 = 2
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"Logarithms are used in many areas of science and engineering including computer science and geology."
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M (mega)
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one million
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"One megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes."
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ยต (micro)
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one millionth
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"Although micro means "one-millionth", many people use it to express simply "a great deal of smallness.""
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m (milli)
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a prefix meaning one thousandth
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"One millitesla is one-thousandth of a tesla."
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n (nano)
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one billionth
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"The teacher said the word "nano" can also be used for anything very small, such as nanotechnology."
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order of magnitude
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10 times bigger or smaller
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"Computer processing power can increase by an order of magnitude between generations."
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T (tera)
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one trillion
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"There are 1,099,511,627,776 bytes in a terabyte."
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