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Floating Point Systems Inc. (FPS) was a Beaverton, Oregon vendor of attached array processors and minisupercomputers. The company was founded in 1970 by former Tektronix engineer Norm Winningstad, with partners Tom Prince, Frank Bouton and Robert Carter. Carter was a salesman for Data General Corp. who persuaded Bouton and Prince to leave Tektronix to start the new company. Winningstad was the fourth partner.

Low-voltage differential signaling, or LVDS, also known as TIA/EIA-644, is a technical standard that specifies electrical characteristics of a differential, serial signaling standard, but it is not a protocol. LVDS operates at low power and can run at very high speeds using inexpensive twisted-pair copper cables. LVDS is a physical layer specification only; many data communication standards and applications use it and add a data link layer as defined in the OSI model on top of it.

LVDS was introduced in 1994, and has become popular in products such as LCD-TVs, automotive infotainment systems, industrial cameras and machine vision, notebook and tablet computers, and communications systems. The typical applications are high-speed video, graphics, video camera data transfers, and general purpose computer buses.

Early on, the notebook computer and LCD display vendors commonly used the term LVDS instead of FPD-Link when referring to their protocol, and the term LVDS has mistakenly become synonymous with Flat Panel Display Link in the video-display engineering vocabulary.

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is the sudden flow of electricity between two electrically charged objects caused by contact, an electrical short or dielectric breakdown. A buildup of static electricity can be caused by tribocharging or by electrostatic induction. The ESD occurs when differently-charged objects are brought close together or when the dielectric between them breaks down, often creating a visible spark.

ESD can create spectacular electric sparks (lightning, with the accompanying sound of thunder, is a large-scale ESD event), but also less dramatic forms which may be neither seen nor heard, yet still be large enough to cause damage to sensitive electronic devices. Electric sparks require a field strength above approximately 40 kV/cm in air, as notably occurs in lightning strikes. Other forms of ESD include corona discharge from sharp electrodes and brush discharge from blunt electrodes.

ESD can cause harmful effects of importance in industry, including explosions in gas, fuel vapor and coal dust, as well as failure of solid state electronics components such as integrated circuits. These can suffer permanent damage when subjected to high voltages. Electronics manufacturers therefore establish electrostatic protective areas free of static, using measures to prevent charging, such as avoiding highly charging materials and measures to remove static such as grounding human workers, providing antistatic devices, and controlling humidity.

ESD simulators may be used to test electronic devices, for example with a human body model or a charged device model.

In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one large body of data with no way to tell where one piece of data stops and the next begins. By separating the data into pieces and giving each piece a name, the data is easily isolated and identified. Taking its name from the way paper-based data management system is named, each group of data is called a "file." The structure and logic rules used to manage the groups of data and their names is called a "file system."

There are many different kinds of file systems. Each one has different structure and logic, properties of speed, flexibility, security, size and more. Some file systems have been designed to be used for specific applications. For example, the ISO 9660 file system is designed specifically for optical discs.

File systems can be used on numerous different types of storage devices that use different kinds of media. As of 2019, hard disk drives have been key storage devices and are projected to remain so for the foreseeable future. Other kinds of media that are used include SSDs, magnetic tapes, and optical discs. In some cases, such as with tmpfs, the computer's main memory (random-access memory, RAM) is used to create a temporary file system for short-term use.

Some file systems are used on local data storage devices; others provide file access via a network protocol (for example, NFS, SMB, or 9P clients). Some file systems are "virtual", meaning that the supplied "files" (called virtual files) are computed on request (such as procfs and sysfs) or are merely a mapping into a different file system used as a backing store. The file system manages access to both the content of files and the metadata about those files. It is responsible for arranging storage space; reliability, efficiency, and tuning with regard to the physical storage medium are important design considerations.

Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve and exchange all kinds of electronic data and information. IT is typically used within the context of business operations as opposed to personal or entertainment technologies. IT is considered to be a subset of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (IT system) is generally an information system, a communications system, or, more specifically speaking, a computer system – including all hardware, software, and peripheral equipment – operated by a limited group of IT users.

Humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating, and communicating information since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in about 3000 BC. However, the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making, and the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs.

The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several products or services within an economy are associated with information technology, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, and e-commerce.

Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC – 1450 AD), mechanical (1450–1840), electromechanical (1840–1940), and electronic (1940–present). This article focuses on the most recent period (electronic).

Interval temporal logic (also interval logic) is a temporal logic for representing both propositional and first-order logical reasoning about periods of time that is capable of handling both sequential and parallel composition. Instead of dealing with infinite sequences of state, interval temporal logics deal with finite sequences.

Interval temporal logics find application in computer science, artificial intelligence and linguistics. First-order interval temporal logic was initially developed in the 1980s for the specification and verification of hardware protocols. Interval temporal logic (ITL) is a specific form of temporal logic, originally developed by Ben Moszkowski for his thesis at Stanford University. It is useful in the formal description of hardware and software for computer-based systems. Tools are available to aid in this process. Tempura provides an executable ITL framework. Compositionality is a significant issue and consideration in the design of ITL.

Notable derivatives of interval temporal logic are graphical interval logic, signed interval logic and future interval logic.

In a computer, an interrupt request (or IRQ) is a hardware signal sent to the processor that temporarily stops a running program and allows a special program, an interrupt handler, to run instead. Hardware interrupts are used to handle events such as receiving data from a modem or network card, key presses, or mouse movements.

Interrupt lines are often identified by an index with the format of IRQ followed by a number. For example, on the Intel 8259 family of Programmable Interrupt Controllers (PICs) there are eight interrupt inputs commonly referred to as IRQ0 through IRQ7. In x86 based computer systems that use two of these PICs, the combined set of lines are referred to as IRQ0 through IRQ15. Technically these lines are named IR0 through IR7, and the lines on the ISA bus to which they were historically attached are named IRQ0 through IRQ15 (although historically as the number of hardware devices increased, the total possible number of interrupts was increased by means of cascading requests, by making one of the IRQ numbers cascade to another set or sets of numbered IRQs, handled by one or more subsequent controllers).

Newer x86 systems integrate an Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) that conforms to the Intel APIC Architecture. These APICs support a programming interface for up to 255 physical hardware IRQ lines per APIC, with a typical system implementing support for only around 24 total hardware lines.

During the early years of personal computing, IRQ management was often of user concern. With the introduction of plug and play devices this has been alleviated through automatic configuration.

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Work on the standard began in 1980 at Bell Labs and was formally standardized in 1988 in the CCITT "Red Book". By the time the standard was released, newer networking system with much greater speeds were available, and ISDN saw relatively little uptake in the wider market. One estimate suggests ISDN use peaked at a worldwide total of 25 million subscribers at a time when 1.3 billion analog lines were in use. ISDN has largely been replaced with digital subscriber line (DSL) systems of much higher performance.

Prior to ISDN, the telephone system consisted of digital links like T1/E1 on the long-distance lines between telephone company offices and analog signals on copper telephone wires to the customers, the "last mile". At the time, the network was viewed as a way to transport voice, with some special services available for data using additional equipment like modems or by providing a T1 on the customer's location. What became ISDN started as an effort to digitize the last mile, originally under the name "Public Switched Digital Capacity" (PSDC). This would allow call routing to be completed in an all-digital system, while also offering a separate data line. The Basic Rate Interface, or BRI, is the standard last-mile connection in the ISDN system, offering two 64 kbit/s "bearer" lines and a single 16 kbit/s "delta" channel for commands and data.

Although ISDN found a number of niche roles and some wider uptake in specific locales, the system was largely ignored and garnered the industry nickname "innovation subscribers didn't need." It found a use for a time for small-office digital connection, using the voice lines for data at 64 kbit/s, sometimes "bonded" to 128 kbit/s, but the introduction of 56 kbit/s modems undercut its value in many roles. It also found use in videoconference systems, where the direct end-to-end connection was desirable. The H.320 standard was designed around its 64 kbit/s data rate. The underlying ISDN concepts found wider use as a replacement for the T1/E1 lines it was originally intended to extend, roughly doubling the performance of those lines.

INFO: Full form for LPC is Lars Pensj in Information Technology category
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An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. Internet service providers can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned.

Internet services typically provided by ISPs can include Internet access, Internet transit, domain name registration, web hosting, Usenet service, and colocation.

An ISP typically serves as the access point or the gateway that provides a user access to everything available on the Internet.

An input method (or input method editor, commonly abbreviated IME) is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters (or mouse operations) that are natively available on their input devices. Using an input method is usually necessary for languages that have more graphemes than there are keys on the keyboard.

For instance, on the computer, this allows the user of Latin keyboards to input Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indic characters. On hand-held devices, it enables the user to type on the numeric keypad to enter Latin alphabet characters (or any other alphabet characters) or touch a screen display to input text. On some operating systems, an input method is also used to define the behaviour of the dead keys.

Internet Information Services (IIS, formerly Internet Information Server) is an extensible web server software created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NNTP. It has been an integral part of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 4.0, though it may be absent from some editions (e.g. Windows XP Home edition), and is not active by default.

An interface description language or interface definition language (IDL), is a generic term for a language that lets a program or object written in one language communicate with another program written in an unknown language. IDLs describe an interface in a language-independent way, enabling communication between software components that do not share one language, for example, between those written in C++ and those written in Java.

IDLs are commonly used in remote procedure call software. In these cases the machines at either end of the link may be using different operating systems and computer languages. IDLs offer a bridge between the two different systems.

Software systems based on IDLs include Sun's ONC RPC, The Open Group's Distributed Computing Environment, IBM's System Object Model, the Object Management Group's CORBA (which implements OMG IDL, an IDL based on DCE/RPC) and Data Distribution Service, Mozilla's XPCOM, Microsoft's Microsoft RPC (which evolved into COM and DCOM), Facebook's Thrift and WSDL for Web services.

INFO: Full form for ANT is Another Neat Tool in Information Technology category
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The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrɛindaːl]), is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001.

AES is a subset of the Rijndael block cipher developed by two Belgian cryptographers, Vincent Rijmen and Joan Daemen, who submitted a proposal to NIST during the AES selection process. Rijndael is a family of ciphers with different key and block sizes. For AES, NIST selected three members of the Rijndael family, each with a block size of 128 bits, but three different key lengths: 128, 192 and 256 bits.

AES has been adopted by the U.S. government. It supersedes the Data Encryption Standard (DES), which was published in 1977. The algorithm described by AES is a symmetric-key algorithm, meaning the same key is used for both encrypting and decrypting the data.

In the United States, AES was announced by the NIST as U.S. FIPS PUB 197 (FIPS 197) on November 26, 2001. This announcement followed a five-year standardization process in which fifteen competing designs were presented and evaluated, before the Rijndael cipher was selected as the most suitable (see Advanced Encryption Standard process for more details).

AES is included in the ISO/IEC 18033-3 standard. AES became effective as a U.S. federal government standard on May 26, 2002, after approval by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. AES is available in many different encryption packages, and is the first (and only) publicly accessible cipher approved by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) for top secret information when used in an NSA approved cryptographic module (see Security of AES, below).

INFO: Full form for AT is Active Terminator in Information Technology category
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Access time is the time delay or latency between a request to an electronic system, and the access being completed or the requested data returned

INFO: Full form for AT is Advanced Technology in Information Technology category
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A multiple-document interface (MDI) is a graphical user interface in which multiple windows reside under a single parent window. Such systems often allow child windows to embed other windows inside them as well, creating complex nested hierarchies. This contrasts with single-document interfaces (SDI) where all windows are independent of each other.