Glossary

This glossary of terms applies to products from Sky Blue Microsystems GmbH of Munich Germany, the EMEA and international distributor in Europe for BittWare, Gidel, Kaya Instruments, Eagle Harbour Technologies (EHT Inc.), Engineering Design Team (EDT Inc.), and NorPix. 

These products include FPGA main board accelerator cards and their mezzanine daughter-boards; high-speed data acquisition, storage and playback solutions; industrial cameras and simulators with related frame grabbers and range extenders for machine vision and broadcasting; arbitrary and nanosecond pulse generators for materials science and other plasma applications; differential integrators for use in magnetic fields in fusion reactors.

Applications of these products include imaging systems, defence, datacom and telecom, signals intelligence, network monitoring and security, deep packet inspection, medical imaging, aerospace, data analytics, manufacturing, optical inspection, and more.

10 Gigabit Ethernet 10 GE, 10 GbE, or 10 GigE. Transmits Ethernet frames at 10 gigabits per second (10×109 or 10 billion bits per second). Full-duplex only p2p. Copper or fiber
10 G SONET OC-192
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
16CH Sixteen channel
1CH One channel, or single channel
1U Rack unit (U or RU), 44.45 mm. Overall height of 19” and 23” rack frames
2.5 G SONET OC-48
2CH Two channel, or dual channel
2U Twice the height of 1U
3U 3x the height of 1U
4CH Four channel, or quad channel
8b/10b Line code that maps 8-bit words to 10-bit symbols, for DC-balance and bounded disparity,  yet allow enough state changes to allow good clock recovery
8CH Eight channel, or octo channel
AdvancedTCA Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture, or PICMG 3.x for carrier grade equipment, also ruggedized for military and aerospace. blades can be Processors, Switches, AMC carriers, etc. Eg. shelf may contain one or more switch blades and several processor blades
AIA Automated Imaging Association, global machine vision industry trade group
AMC Advanced Mezzanine Card, per
API Application Programming Interface
ATCA AdvancedTCA
BERT Binary Erlang Term. Defines data types, eg int, char, etc.
Bi-Directional Single Strand Single strand, bi-directional 10 Gbit/s optics capable of a single-mode fiber connection functionally equivalent to 10 G BASE-LR or -ER
bit rate Number of bits transferred per operation, aka channel width or word length.
BNC Bayonet Neill-Concelman coax connector
Bus A communications line or channel, conforming to an agreed protocol
C-Link Camera Link High Speed
Camera Link Serial communication protocol using NS Channel-Link for scientific and industrial video including cameras, cables and frame grabbers. Base – MDR, 255 Mbs. Medium – 2nd cable, 510 Mbs. Full 680 Mbs. Deca – +2 cables, 80-bit, 880 Mbs
CCD Charge-coupled Device. Moves charge between capacitive bins, eg convert photons to charge in MOS, then read out via CCD. Used for medical and industrial grade image capture
CDR Clock and Data Recovery
CEPT Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (Europe)
CEPT European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations
CL CameraLink, Camera Link
CL HS Camera Link High Speed
CLHS Camera Link High Speed
CLHS M CLHS at 3.125 Gbps per lane
CLHS X CLHS at 10.3 Gbps per lane
CMOS Complementary Metal-oxide Semiconductors. Used for consumer-grade image capture
CoaXPress Asymmetric high speed serial communication over single coaxial cable without external power or uplink cables. 6.25 Gbps, parallel cables ok
Codec Coder/decoder of a digital data stream
CompactPCI (unofficially cPCI, CPCI, cPCIe, or CPCIe) 32-bit bus. 3U or 6U, interconnect via J1 and J2 on backplane, pins (2 mm spacing) conform to PICMG. 8 boards per segment, can be bridged, hot-pluggable
COTS Commercial Off The Shelf, as opposed to a custom or bespoke design or product
CXP CoaXPress
DDR2 Double Data Rate memory
DDR3 Double Data Rate memory. 2X DDR2
Differential signaling transmit data as voltage difference between two stands of a pair, compare at receiver.
DIMM Dual In-Line Memory Module, 64-bit
DMA Direct memory Access. Bypass CPU, memory-to-memory,
DoE United States Department of Energy
DoS United States Department of Defense
DoS United States Department of State
DRAM Dynamic Random Access memory. Main memory
Duty Cycle Time it takes for a signal to complete and on-off cycle. D = PW / T
DV PMC DV
E3 34 Mbps, 512 channels. European E-carrier transmission system. Not compatible, but comparable, with US T-carrier. Carries DS3 data
ECL Emitter-coupled Logic. > 1 Gbps high-speed differential interface technology – high power, high speed.
EDT Engineering Design Team, Inc. Hillsboro WA
EHT Eagle Harbor Technologies, Inc. Seattle WA
EMEA Europe, Middle East, and Africa
EMI Electromagnetic Interference
Ethernet 10-100 Gbps. IEEE 802.3. Twisted pair and fiber optic with hubs and switches, also bridges, repeaters. Frame transmission
Fiber Optic Low attenuation, high bandwidth, insulated, secure (no tapping), cheaper than copper and no theft, no EMF i.e. isolated
FMC FPGA Mezzanine Card
FPGA Field Programmable Gate Array
fps Frames per second
Freewheeling diode To eliminate sudden voltage spike seen across an inductive load when its supply current is suddenly reduced.Also flyback, snubber diode, commutating, suppressor, suppression, clamp, or catch diode
GB Gigabyte, Gb. One thousand million bytes
Gb/s Gigabytes per second
Gbps Gigabits per second
Gbs Gigabytes per second
GiB/s Gibibyte (binary gigabytes) per second. Data rate
GigE Vision Interface standard for high-performance industrial cameras over Ethernet. Overseen by AIA
GT/s Gigatransfers per second. Sample rate, or ops per second transferring data per channel
GPGPU General Processing using Graphic Processing Units
HD High Definition, video standard e.g. 1080p
HIPPI ANSI High-Performance Parallel Interface, includes ECL
HPC High Performance Computing
HS frame grabber
I/O Input/Output
IGBT Insulated-gate bipolar transistor. Fast switch
Interwebs www.skyblue.de
J1 J2 110 pin connectors
Jitter Deviation from true periodicity, relative to the the clock
L-Band 1 to 2 GHz range. GPS, GSM, satellite phones, mobile downlink, aviation, ham radio, military telemetry, radio astronomy (hydrogen line)
LAN PHY 10 GbE LAN variant with line rate 10.3125 Gbps
LC Lucent/Little/Local Connector. For high density SFP/+, XFP etc.
LVDS Low Voltage Differential Signaling. > 1 Gbps high speed, low power. Physical layer in many frame grabbers and optical transceivers
Mb/s Megabits per second
Mbs Megabits per second
MBs Megabits per second
MDR26 Mini D-Ribbon 26-pin
Mezzanine A circuit board that is mounted on a mainboard. It cannot run standalone. It draws power from the mainboard, and exchanges data with the mainboard
MHz Megahertz. Million Hertz
MMF Multi-mode fiber
MMF Multi-mode fiber
MOSFET Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor. Fast swicthing at low voltages
Mp Megapixel, million pixels
Mpix Megapixel
MSA Multi-Source Agreement between manufacturers
MT/s Megatransfers per second
Mux/Demux Multiplexer/Demultiplexer
NASA United States National Aeronautics and Space Agency
NIC Network Interface Card
NPS Nanosecond Pulser
OC Optical Channel. Base rate is 51.84 Mbps. Transmission rate is OC-n, where n – base rate. For SONET fiber optic networks
OC-1 Payload 50.112 Mbps
OC-12 622.08 Mbps, payload 149.76 Mbps, overhead 601.344 Mbps. WAN, web hosts, small ISPs. Aka STM-4
OC-192 9953.28 Mbps, payload 9510.912 Mbps. > 1 GbE. Interoperable with 10 GbE Wan PHY. Aka STM-64 and 10 G SONET
OC-1920 99,532.8 Mbps. Aka STM-640
OC-24 1244.16 Mbps, payload 1202.208 Mbps. Rare
OC-3 Payload 155.52 Mbps, overhead 6.912 Mbps. Aka STS-3 (electrical level) and STM-1 (SDH)
OC-3c Concatenated: 3x OC-1. Payload 149.76 Mbps, overhead 6.912 Mbps. CEPT-4 139.264 Mbps
OC-48 2488.32 Mbps, payload 2405.376 Mbps. > 1 GbE. Regional ISP backbone. Aka STM-16 and 2.5 G SONET
OC-768 39,813.12 Mbps, payload 38,486.016 Mbps. > 1 GbE. Multi-thousand km terrestrial and submarine cables. Aka STM-256 and 10 G SONET
Orphaned rates OC-9, OC-18, OC-36, OC-96, and OC-1536
OTN Optical Transport Network. Defines a set of Optical Network Elements (ONE) connected by fiber
OTU1 OTU1
PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect. 32-bit serial point-to-point bus.
PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect. 32-bit serial point-to-point bus
PCI Express (PCIe, PCI-e) Higher throughput, lower I/O pin count, smaller footprint, better scaling, more detailed error detection and reporting, hot-plugging
PCI Express PHY, PCIe PHY, PCIEPHY or just PHY PCIe Physical Layer
PCI-E PCI Express 8 Lane
PCI-X Peripheral Component Interconnect eXtended. 64-bit parallel bus, superseded by PCI Express. Enhances the 32-bit PCI local bus for higher bandwidth for serversand workstations. Higher clock speeds (up to 133 MHz), similar electrical. PCI-X 2.0 533 MHz
PCI/104-Express Incorporates ress withgene,cification defines a 156-pin surface mount connector for the PCI Express signals. 
PCIe/104 PCI/104-Express
PCIe1g (PCI Express version or generation 1.0) Line code 8b/10b transfer rate 2.5 GT/s, throughput 250 MB/s per lane
PCIe2g (PCI Express version or generation 2.0) Line code 8b/10b transfer rate 5 GT/s, throughput 500 MB/s per lane
PCIe3g (PCI Express version or generation 3.0) Line code 128b/130b transfer rate 8 GT/s, throughput 984.6 MB/s per lane
PCIe4g (PCI Express version or generation 4.0) 2017? Line code 128b/130b transfer rate 16 GT/s, throughput 1969 MB/s per lane
PCIe5g (PCI Express version or generation 5.0) 2019? Line code 128b/130b transfer rate 32 GT/s, throughput 3938 MB/s per lane
PCIe8g PCI Express 8 Lane
PICMG PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, 227 company consortium formed to adapt PCI to high-performance telecommunications, military, and industrial computing
PMC PCI Mezzanine Card
PoCL Power over Camera Link
PoCXP Power over CoaXpress
PoE Power over Ethernet
POS Packet over SONET/SDH
PR Pulse Repetition Rate or Frequency
PW Pulse Width
PWM Pulse Width Modulation. Encodes data in a pulsing signal. Also PDM, pulse duration modulation
PXI PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation. Modular platform for test equipment, automation systems, and laboratory instruments
QSFP Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable. 4x 1 Gbps
QSFP+ Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable. 4x 10 Gbps
QSFP28 Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable. 4x 28 Gbps, 100 Gbps
Realtime Imperceptible delay, effectively instant, or zero latency
RS422 Differential 10 Mbps, 1,250 m. p2p, no multidrop
SBIR Small business Innovation Grant
SC Optical connector: square connector, subscriber connector, set and click, stab and click. High packing density
SDK Sixteen channel
SDR26 Connector
SDR26 Shrunk MDR
SDRAM Synchronous dynamic random-access memory
SFP Small Form Factor transceiver. Compact, hot-pluggable, for telecom and datacom. Modular interface to a network device (switch, router, media converter, network interface card, etc) to adapt to fiber or copper networking standards. Supports SONET, GbE, Fibre Channel, etc.
SFP+ Enhanced SFP to 16 Gbit/s. Supports 8 Gbit/s, Fibre Channel,10 GbE, standard OTU2, etc.
SMF Single-mode fiber
SMF Single-mode fiber. > 1000 meters
SO-DIMM SODIMM
SODIMM Small Outline Dual In-Line Memory Module
SONET Synchronous Optical Networking (mostly used in US and Canada. Analogous with SDH, mostly used in rest of world). transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting diodes (LEDs). At low transmission rates data can also be transferred via an electrical interface. For real-time, uncompressed, circuit-switched voice encoded in PCM format. Better synchronized via atomic clock than PDH. Transports ATM frames (cells)
SRAM Static Random Access Memory. Fast but expensive, CPU cache
ST Optical connector: straight tip, set and twist, stab and twist, and single twist, square top. Bayonet tab must align, spring loaded
STM Synchronous Transport Module. Basic unit of SDH framing. Level 1 STM-1 is 155.520 Mbps (SONET STS-3c), increases in multiples of 4
STM-1 OC-3c
STM-16 OC-48
STM-256 OC-768
STM-4 OC-12
STM-64 OC-192
STM-640 OC-1920
STTR ?? technolgy Transfer ??
SWAP Size, Weight, And Power
Synchronous serial Single clock, multiple peripherals
T3 45 Mbps, 672 channels. North American T-carrier transmission system. Not compatible, but comparable, with European E-carrier. Carries ES3/SL3 data
Tflops  Teraflops, one trillion (long scale) floating point operations per second, 1012 Flops
TTL Transistor-to-Transistor Logic, ???
Turnkey Off the shelf, ready to use. As opposed to a custom design or build
UART Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter. Configurable format and speed, external driver circuit
USART Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
VCXO Volt controlled crystal oscillators
VMEbus Versa Module Europa bus. Eurocard
VXS VMEBus Switched Serial. Improves performance of parallel bus
WAN PHY 10 GbE WAN variant with line rate of ? Gbps (same as OC-192 and STM-64)
WDM Wavelength-division Multiplexing. Example: submarine cabling
x1 PCI single lane – two differential signaling pairs
x12 PCI 12 lane
x16 PCI 16 lane (practical max)
x32 PCI 32 lane (rare)
x4 PCI 4 lane
x8 PCI 8 lane
XMC Switched PCI Mezzanine Card. VITA 42, fifth connector at P15