Technologies for the 21st Century Glossary

	A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W
A	AChE Acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme.   ACTS Advanced Computational Testing and Simulation.   AD Automatically Differentiated.   ADIC Automatic Differentiation Tool.   ADL Alexandria Digital Library.   AFM Atomic Force Microscope.   AHCPR Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, part of the Public Health Service of the HHS.   Algorithm A procedure designed to solve a problem. Scientific computing programs implement algorithms.   ALU Arithmetic Logic Unit.   ARPANet Advanced Research Projects Agency Network.   ASCI DOE's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative.   AskERIC Department of Education's Educational Resources Information center.   ATDNet Advanced Technology Demonstration Network.   ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode, a telecommunications technology, also known as cell switching, which is based on 53-byte cells.   AVS Software package used to project the results from simulations onto molecular surfaces.
B	Backbone Network A high capacity electronic trunk -- for example the NSFNET backbone -- connecting lower capacity networks.   Bandwidth A measure of the capacity of a communications channel to transmit information; for example, millions of bits per second or Mb/s.   Benchmark A point of reference (artifact) to compare an aspect of systems performance (for example, a well known set of programs). Also, to conduct and assess the computation (or transmission) capabilities of a system using a wel l known artifact.   BIT DARPA's Broadband Information Technology.   Bit An acronym for binary digit.   Bps, or B/s An acronym for bytes per second.   bps, or b/s An acronym for bits per second.   Byte A group of adjacent binary digits operated upon as a unit (usually connotes a group of eight bits).
C	C C programming language.   C++ C++ programming language, an object-oriented descendant of the C language.   CAD Computer-aided design.   CAS NASA's Computational Aerosciences Project.   CAVE CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment. A surround screen, surround sound, projection-based virtual reality (VR) system.   CCIC Committee on Computing, Information, and Communications (formerly the Committee on Information and Communications) of the NSTC.   CCMS Computational center for Macromolecular Structure.   CIC Computing, Information, and Communications.   CIC R&D Subcommittee Computing, Information, and Communications R&D Subcommittee (formerly HPCCIT), part of CCIC.   CIM Computer Integrated Manufacturing.   CLIMVIS Acronym for the Climate Visualization System at the National Climatic Data center.   CMAQ Community Multi-scale Air Quality.   COTS Commercial off-the-shelf. Describes hardware and software that are readily available commercially.   CPU Central processing unit.   CRPC center for Research in Parallel Computation.   CSCMDO The Coordinate and Sensitivity Calculator for Multidisciplinary Design Optimization code -- a 3-D volume grid generator.   CT Computed tomography.   CTC Cornell Theory center.
D	DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of DOD. Formerly ARPA.   Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI) Program that is developing an interoperability protocol for interconnecting diverse libraries and services.   DII Defense Information Infrastructure.   Distributed Visualization Project Develops data compression algorithms that provide fast data browsing and interactive visualization capabilities.   DLITE Digital Library Integrated Task Environment.   DNA Deoxyribonucleic Acid, a biomolecule from which genes are composed.   DOD Department of Defense.   DOE Department of Energy.   DOE 2000 Department of Energy program focusing on discovering solutions to the Department's increasingly complex scientific problems.
E	ED Department of Education.   EMC Enhanced Machine Controller.   EPA Environmental Protection Agency.   ESNet Energy Sciences Network.   ESS Earth and Space Sciences.   ETHR Education, Training, and Human Resources. One of the five Program Component Areas.   EVL Electronic Visualization Laboratory.   Exa- A prefix denoting 1018, or a million trillion. (For example, exabytes).
F	Flops Acronym for floating point operations per second. The term "floating point" refers to that format of numbers that is most commonly used for scientific calculation. Flops is used as a measure of a computing system's speed of performing basic arithmetic operations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing two numbers.   FNC Federal Networking Council.
G	G, or Giga- A prefix denoting 109 , or a billion. (For example, Gflops or gigaflops; gigabytes, gigabits).   Gateway A system that interconnects networks (or applications) that communicate using different protocols, and bridges their differences by transforming one protocol (message) into another.   GB An acronym for Gigabyte.   Gb An acronym for Gigabit.   Gb/s Gigabits per second.   GFDL NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.   Gflops Gigaflops, billions of floating point operations per second.   GOES Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite.   Grand Challenge A fundamental problem in science and engineering, with broad economic and scientific impact, whose solution can be advanced by applying high performance computing and/or communications techniques and resources.   GrIDS Graph-based Intrusion Detection System.   GSA General Services Administration.
H	HCI Human-Computer Interaction. A project at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab that explores advanced human-computer interaction and collaboration technologies.    HCS High Confidence Systems. One of the five Program Component Areas.   HECC High End Computing and Computation. One of the five Program Component Areas.   Heterogeneous system A distributed system that contains more than one kind of computer.   HPCC High Performance Computing and Communications.   HuCS Human centered Systems. One of the five Program Component Areas.   H-threads Horizontal threads. Parallel instruction sequences.
I	IITF Information Infrastructure Task Force.   INet Information Network. A program of the Department of Education that manages the Internet and World Wide Web presence of the National Library of Education.   INFOSEC Information Systems Security.   Internet The global collection of interconnected, multiprotocol computer networks including Federal, private, and international networks.   I/O Input/Output.   IP Internet Protocol.   ISV Independent Software Vendor.
J	JTO Joint Technology Office.
K	K, or Kilo- A prefix denoting 103 , or a thousand. (For example, kilobits/second).   Kb/s Kilobits per second or thousands of bits per second.
L	LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory.   LBNL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.   LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.   LPS Low pressure subsystem.   LSN Large Scale Networking. One of the five Program Component Areas.
M	M, or Mega- A prefix denoting 106 , or a million. (For example, Mbps, or megabits per second; Mflops).   MADE Manufacturing Automation and Design Engineering.   Math and Science Gateway Internet link that connects students and educators to educational resources.   MB An acronym for Megabyte.   Mb An acronym for Megabit.   MBONE Multicast backbone.   Mb/s Megabits per second or millions of bits per second.   MCM 3-D Diamond MCM Cube Computer, a project that will build a test vehicle to demonstrate a 3-D computer architecture with a nanosecond system clock.   MDH The enzyme malate dehydrogenase   MEDLARS Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System. Provides rapid access to the National Library of Medicine's biomedical and health information.   MEG Magnetoencephalography.   MEL NIST's Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory.   Mflops Megaflops, millions of floating point operations per second.   MIPS Millions of instructions per second.   MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology.   MM5 Mesoscale Meteorological model.   MOSIS Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Implementation System.   MPI Message Passing Interface.   MR Magnetic Resonance.   MRA Metacenter Regional Alliance.   MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging.   MSE Manufacturing System Environment.
N	NAAQS National Ambient Air Quality Standards.   NAS National Academy of Sciences.   NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration.   National Challenge A fundamental application that has broad and direct impact on the Nation's competitiveness and the well-being of its citizens and that can benefit from the application of CIC technology and resources.   National Information Infrastructure (NII) The integration of hardware, software, and skills that will make it easy and affordable to connect people with each other, with computers, and with a vast array of services and information resources.   NCAR National center for Atmospheric Research.   NCBI National center for Biotechnology Information.   NCDC NOAA's National Climatic Data center.   NCI National Cancer Institute, part of NIH.   NCO National Coordination Office for Computing, Information, and Communications.   NCRR National center for Research Resources, part of NIH.   NCSA National Computational Science Alliance, Urbana-Champaign, IL, successor to the National center for Supercomputing Applications.   NERSC National Energy Research Supercomputer center.   Network Computer communications technologies that link multiple computers to share information and resources across geographicall y dispersed locations.   NGI Next Generation Internet.   NIH National Institutes of Health, part of HHS.   NII National Information Infrastructure.   NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of DOC.   NLM National Library of Medicine, part of NIH.   nM nanoManipulator.   NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of DOC.   NPACI National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure.   NPSS Numerical Propulsion System Simulator.   NREN NASA's Research and Education Network.   NSA National Security Agency, part of DOD.   NSF National Science Foundation.   NSFNET National Science Foundation computer network program.   NSTC National Science and Technology Council.   NTTP Numerical Tokamak Turbulence Project.
O	OCR Optical character recognition.   OMB Office of Management and Budget.   ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory.   OS Operating system.   OSTP White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
P	PACI Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure.   Parallel processing Simultaneous processing by more than one processing unit on a single application.   PARC Palo Alto Research center.   PCA Program Component Area. Structure of the Computing, Information, and Communications R&D programs. Each PCA spans an area in which multiple agencies have activities. The five PCAs are High End Computing and Computation (HECC); Large Scale Networking (LSN); High Confidence Systems (HCS); Human centered Systems (HuCS); and Education, Training, and Human Resources (ETHR).   Peta- A prefix denoting 1015, or a thousand trillion. (For example, petabits).   PSC Pittsburgh Supercomputer center.
Q	QD Quantum dynamics.   QMM/MM Quantum and classical mathematics.   QoS Quality of Service.
R	R&D Research and development.   RCWS Radiology Consultation Workstation.   RSFQ Rapid single-flux quantum devices.   RTEC Regional Technology in Education Consortium.
S	SAW Secure Access Wrapper.   SBSS Science Based Stockpile Stewardship.   Scalable A system is scalable if it can be made to have more (or less) computational power by configuring it with a larger (or smaller) number of processors, amount of memory, interconnection bandwidth, input/output bandwidth, and amount of mass storage.   SDE Standards Development Environment.   SDSC San Diego Supercomputer center.   SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language.   SIMA Systems Integration for Manufacturing Applications.   SIMD Single Instruction Multiple Data.   SONET Synchronous Optical Network.   SSEC Space Science and Engineering center of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.   STIMULATE Speech, Text, Image, and Multimedia Advanced Technology.   STM Scanning Tunneling Microscope.   SUIF Stanford University Intermediate Format.
T	T, or Tera- A prefix denoting 1012 or a trillion. (For example, terabits, teraflops).   TBA Task Based Authorization.   TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.   TFTR Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor.   THz Trillions of cycles per second   TPS The Technology Policy Subcommittee.   TTTE Testbeds and Technology Transfer Environment.   TVS Text Video Speech.
U	UCLA University of California-Los Angeles.   UCSD University of California-San Diego.   UIUC University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.   UMDL University of Michigan Digital Library Project.   UMLS Unified Medical Language System.   UNC University of North Carolina.   USC University of Southern California.
U	VA Department of Veterans Affairs.   vBNS Very high speed Backbone Network Services.   Vis5D System for visualizing the output of atmospheric and ocean models with composite images from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)   VLSI Very Large Scale Integration. A type of computer chip.   VRML Virtual Reality Modeling Language.   V-threads Vertical threads. Exploit thread-level parallelism, and mask variable pipeline, memory, and communication delays.
W	WAN Wide area network.   Web A reference to the World Wide Web, which is a subset of the Internet supported by a related set of protocols, services, and software tools including browsers.   Wireless technologies Communications technologies that use radio, microwave, or satellite communications channels versus wire, coaxial, or optical fiber.   WP Web Prototype.   WWW World Wide Web.