MOSFET – Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor Pronounced MAWS-feht. Acronym for metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor, a common type of transistor in which charge carriers, such as electrons, flow along channels. The width of the channel, which determines how well the device conducts, is controlled by an electrode called the gate, separated from channel by a thin layer of oxide insulation. The insulation keeps current from flowing between the gate and channel. MOSFET...

A microprocessor, sometimes called a logic chip, is a computer processor on a microchip. The microprocessor contains all, or most of, the central processing unit (CPU) functions and is the "engine" that goes into motion when you turn your computer on. A microprocessor is designed to perform arithmetic and logic operations that make use of small number-holding areas called registers. Typical microprocessor operations include adding, subtracting, comparing two numbers, and fetching numbers from...

Operating System (OS) Definition An operating system (OS) is the program that, after being initially loaded into the computer by a boot program, manages all the other programs in a computer. The other programs are called applications or application programs. The application programs make use of the operating system by making requests for services through a defined application program interface (API). In addition, users can interact directly with the operating system through a user interface suc...

Backplane Definition A backplane is an electronic circuit board containing circuitry and sockets into which additional electronic devices on other circuit boards or cards can be plugged; in a computer, generally synonymous with or part of the motherboard.

Bottleneck Definition A bottleneck, in a communications context, is a point in the enterprise where the flow of datais impaired or stopped entirely. Effectively, there isn't enough data handling capacity to handle the current volume of traffic.A bottleneck can occur in the user network or storage fabric or within servers where there is excessive contention for internal server resources, such as CPU processing power, memory, or I/O (input/output). As a result, data flow slows down to t...

HIPPI (High-Performance Parallel Interface) HIPPI (High-Performance Parallel Interface) is a standard point-to-point protocol for transmitting large amounts of data at up to billions of bits per second over relatively short distances, mainly on local area networks ( LAN s). The proponents of HIPPI believe that its use can make computers, interconnected storage devices, and other resources on a local area network function as though they were all within a single supercomputer. (One firm has c...

ISO Definition ISO, founded in 1947, is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, with one standards body representing each member country. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), for example, represents the United States. Member organizations collaborate in the development and promotion of international standards. Among the standards the ISO fosters is Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), a universal reference model for communication protocols. ...

NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) Definition NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) is a technology specification designed to enable nonvolatile memory express message-based commands to transfer data between a host computer and a target solid-state storage device or system over a network, such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel (FC) or InfiniBand. NVM Express Inc., a nonprofit organization comprising more than 100 member technology companies, published version 1.0 of the NVMe-oF specification on June 5, 2016. A wo...

First came PCI, then PCI-X, then PCI Express. PCI Express can be abbreviated as PCIe or, less commonly and more confusingly, PCX. Unlike earlier PCI standards, PCI Express does not use a parallel bus structure, but instead is a network of serial connections controlled by a hub on the computer's motherboard. This enables PCI Express cards to run significantly faster than previous PCI cards. Because the PCI Express interface is a serial connection, it does not have a speed measured in Megahertz...