Networked Computing 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	AAI ACTS ATM International.   AC A parallel C language.   ACTS NASA's Advanced Communication Technology Satellite.   ACTS Advanced Computational Testing and Simulation.   AFOSR Air Force Office of Scientific Research.   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.   ANIR NSF's Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research.   API Applications programming interface.   ARPS Advanced Regional Prediction System.   ASAP DOE's Academic Strategic Alliances Program.   ASCI DOE's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative.   ASR Automatic speech recognition   ATDNet Advanced Technology Demonstration Network.   ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode, a telecommunications technology, also known as cell switching, which is based on 53-byte cells.
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 well known artifact.   BIT DARPA's Broadband Information Technology.   Bit An acronym for binary digit.   BLAS Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms.   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.   CA Certificate authorities.   Caltech California Institute of Technology.   CAPS center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms.   CAS NASA's Computational Aerosciences Project.   CAVE Cave Automatic Virtual Environment. A surround screen, surround sound, projection- based virtual reality (VR) system.   CBVE Chesapeake Bay Virtual Environment.   CCIC Former Committee on Computing, Information, and Communications of the NSTC, now merged into the Committee on Technology.   CDMA Code division multiple access.   CERT Computer Emergency Response Team.   CIAC Computer Incident Advisory Capability.   CIC Computing, Information, and Communications.   CIC R&D, Subcommittee on Subcommittee on Computing, Information, and Communications R&D, which reports to the Committee on Technology.   CIS Collaborations in Internet Security   CISE NSF's Directorate for Computer Information Science and Engineering.   CIT The CIT supports NIH's research and management programs with efficient, cost-effective information systems, networking services, and telecommunications services.   CORE2000 A real-time collaboration engine being developed at DOE's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) to handle membership, authentication, event distribution, and invocation.   CoS Class of Service.   COTS Commercial off-the-shelf. Describes hardware and software that are readily available commercially.   CPR Computer-based patient records.   CRPC center for Research in Parallel Computation.   CT Committee on Technology of the NSTC.
D	DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of DoD. Formerly ARPA.   DCRT NIH's Division of Computer Research. In February 1998, the center for Information Technology (CIT) combined the functions of DCRT, the Office of Information Resources Management (OIRM), and the Telecommunications Branch (TCB) of the Office of Research Services. (See CIT.)   DES Data encryption standard.   DII Defense Information Infrastructure.   DISS Distributed Image Spread Sheet.   DNA Deoxyribonucleic Acid, a biomolecule from which genes are composed.   DoD Department of Defense.   DoDEA Department of Defense Education Program, the public school system for dependents of US personnel worldwide.   DoD HPC Modernization Program Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program.   DOE Department of Energy.   DOE2000 Department of Energy program focusing on discovering solutions to the Department's increasingly complex scientific problems.   DRAM Dynamic Random Access Memory.   DREN DoD's Defense Research and Engineering Network.
E	ED Department of Education.   EMSL DOE's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.   EPA Environmental Protection Agency.   EPSCoR Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.   ERIC ED's Educational Resources Information center.   ESNet DOE's Energy Sciences Network.   ESS Earth and Space Sciences.   ETA A model currently being tested at the National centers for Environmental Prediction Environmental Modeling center (EMC) Mesoscale Modeling Branch.   ETHR Education, Training, and Human Resources. One of the five CIC R&D Program Component Areas.   Exa- A prefix denoting 1018, or a million trillion. (For example, exabytes).
F	FAA Federal Aviation Administration.   FDA Food and Drug Administration.   FedCIRC Federal Computer Incident Response Capability.   FISAC Federal Information Services Applications Council, formerly the Applications Council, which reports to the Subcommittee on CIC R&D.   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.   FRA Federal Railroad Administration.   FSL NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory in Boulder, CO.   FTA Federal Transit Administration.   FTP File transfer protocol.   FY Fiscal Year.
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 or Gbps Gigabits per second.   GFDL NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.   Gflops Gigaflops, billions of floating point operations per second.   Gigapops Gigabit per second points of presence.   GITS Government Information Technology Services.   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.   GSA General Services Administration.   GSFC NASA Goddard Space Flight center.
H	HCS High Confidence Systems. One of the five Program Component Areas.   HECC High End Computing and Computation. One of the five CIC R&D Program Component Areas.   Heterogeneous system A distributed system that contains more than one kind of computer.   HFC Hybrid fiber coax.   HPC High performance computing.   HPCC High Performance Computing and Communications, a Federal R&D Program that is the predecessor to the CIC R&D programs.   HPCRP High Performance Computing Resource Provider.   HuCS Human centered Systems. One of the five CIC R&D Program Component Areas.   HTMT Hybrid technology multithreaded architecture.
I	IAIMS NIH's Academic Medical centers.   IGERT NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training.   INFOSEC Information Systems Security.   Internet The global collection of interconnected, multiprotocol computer networks including Federal, private, and international networks.   I2 Internet2.   I/O Input/Output.   IP Internet Protocol.   IPSEC IP Security Protocol.   IRS Internal Revenue Service, part of the Department of Treasury.   ISV Independent Software Vendor.
J	JET Joint Engineering Team, part of LSN.   JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory.   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.   KDI NSF's Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Program.   kv Kilovolt.
L	LAN Local area network.   LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory.   LBNL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.   LIS NSF's Learning and Intelligent Systems Program.   LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.   LoC Library of Congress.   LOTS An optical tape system with ten times the storage per tape and at least ten times the input data rate compared with conventional large stores.   LSN Large Scale Networking. One of the five CIC R&D Program Component Areas.
M	M, or Mega- A prefix denoting 106, or a million. (For example, Mbps, or megabits per second; Mflops).   MAGIC An information system that allows interactive viewing of large geographic areas in 3-D by retrieving and merging massive volumes of remotely located data.   MASH Multi-media architecture that scales across heterogeneous environments.   MB An acronym for Megabyte.   Mb An acronym for Megabit.   MBONE Multicast backbone.   Mb/s or Mbps Megabits per second or millions of bits per second.   MCM Multichip module.   MEDLARS Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System. Provides rapid access to the NLM's biomedical and health information.   Mflops Megaflops, millions of floating point operations per second.   Mips Millions of instructions per second.   MISPC Minimum Interoperability Specification for Public Key Infrastructure Components.   MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology.   ML Maximum likelihood criterion.   MM5 Mesoscale Meteorological model.   MMC Materials Microcharacterization Collaboratory.   MPI Message Passing Interface.   MPP Massively parallel processing.   MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
N	NAPs Network access points.   NAS Numerical aerodynamic simulation.   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.   NBS National Bureau of Standards, NIST's predecessor.   NCAR National center for Atmospheric Research.   NCBI National center for Biotechnology Information.   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.   NEH National Endowment for the Humanities.   NERSC National Energy Research Supercomputer center.   Network Computer communications technologies that link multiple computers for sharing information and resources across geographically dispersed locations.   NGI Next Generation Internet, a Presidential CIC R&D initiative.   NIDRR ED's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.   NIGMS National Institute of General Medical Sciences.   NIH National Institutes of Health, part of HHS.   NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the Department of Commerce.   NLANR National Laboratory for Applied Networking Research, sponsored by NSF.   NLM National Library of Medicine, part of NIH.   NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the Department of Commerce.   NOW Network of workstations.   NPACI National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure.   NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission.   NREN NASA's Research and Education Network.   NRT Networking Research Team, which reports to the LSN Working Group.   NSA National Security Agency, part of DoD.   NSF National Science Foundation.   NSFNET National Science Foundation computer network program.   NSTC National Science and Technology Council.
O	OC-nn Optical carrier. "nn" is a number, with a higher number indicating a faster data transmission rate.   OMB White House Office of Management and Budget.   ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory.   OS Operating system.   OSTP White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
P	PACI Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure.   Parallel processing Simultaneous processing by more than one processing unit on a single application.   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).   PCP A Parallel C language.   PCS Personal communication services.   PECASE Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering.   PET Position emission tomography.   Peta- A prefix denoting 1015, or a thousand trillion. (For example, petabits).   pflop/s Petaflops, 1015 flops level performance.   PKI Public key infrastructure.   P-NNI Peer Network-to-Network Interface.   Prions Prions are a novel class of "infectious" pathogens distinct from viruses with respect to both their structure and the neurodegenerative diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), that they cause.   PrP Prion protein. It is the major, if not the only, component of prions, the protein implicated in Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).   PrPC The normal cellular form of PrP (see above).   PrPSc The abnormal, disease (scrapie)-related form of PrP (see above).   PSC Pittsburgh Supercomputer center.   PSE Problem Solving Environment.
Q	QoS Quality of Service.
R	R&D Research and development.   RCWS Radiology Consultation Workstation.   RES A system developed to harness "idle" workstations.   RTEC Regional Technology in Education Consortium.
S	SAR Synthetic aperture radar.   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.   SciTL Scientific Template Library. The initial projects undertaken under the Advanced Computational Testing and Simulation portion of DOE2000.   SDSC San Diego Supercomputer center.   SEMATECH A national consortium dedicated to conducting semiconductor research.   SGI Silicon Graphics, Inc.   SIMA NIST's Systems Integration for Manufacturing Applications.   SMPs Symmetric multiprocessor systems.   SONET Synchronous Optical Network.   Split-C A parallel C language.   S&T Science and technology.   STAR TAP A network access point.   STIMULATE Speech, Text, Image, and Multimedia Advanced Technology Effort.   STM Scanning Tunneling Microscope.
T	T, or Tera- A prefix denoting 1012 or a trillion. (For example, terabits, teraflops).   Tbps Terabit-per-second.   TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.   TDM Time division multiplexing.   TETRA A versatile robotic crane, one of several experimental technologies being investigated at NIST's National Construction Automation Testbed.   THz Trillions of cycles per second   TTS Text-to-Speech, a core speech technology comprising the speech kernel in DARPA's natural language understanding technology.
U	UCAID University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development.   UC-Berkeley University of California at Berkeley.   UCLA University of California-Los Angeles.   UCSD University of California-San Diego.   UIUC University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.   UMLS Unified Medical Language System.   UPC A programming language that combines features of AC with features of Split-C and PCP, two other parallel C languages.   USC University of Southern California.
U	VA Department of Veterans Affairs.   vBNS very high performance 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.
W	WAN Wide area network.   WDM Wavelength division multiplexing.   Web A reference to the World Wide Web.   Wireless technologies Communications technologies that use radio, microwave, or satellite communications channels versus wire, coaxial, or optical fiber.   WIT Web-based interoperability tester.   WWW World Wide Web.