Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) is a type of communications pathway built into all pre-G4 versions of the Apple Macintosh computers. It is used to connect low-speed input devices such as the keyboard and mouse. A single ADB port can support as many as 16 simultaneous input devices.
Address Bus
Address bus is an internal channel from the CPU to memory across which the addresses of data are transmitted. The number of lines or wires in the address bus determines the amount of memory that can be directly addressed as each line carries one bit of the address. For example, if the address bus contains electrical lines, the processor can address up to 2**n unique locations. No actual data is carried on this bus, rather memory addresses, which control the location that data is either read from or written to, are sent here. The speed of the address bus is the same as the data bus it is matched to.
Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT)
Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) is a form of magnetic tape and drive using AME developed by Sony for storing large amounts of data. AIT features high speed file access, long head and media life, the ALDC compression algorithm, and a MIC chip. There are a few types of AIT tapes: AIT-1, AIT-2, AIT-3, AIT-4 and S-AIT, each has different capacities and speeds.
AGP Pro
AGP Pro is an extension to the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) specification to provide additional electrical power to the graphics add-in cards in the advanced graphic workstation. The AGP Pro definition includes an extended connector, thermal envelope, mechanical specifications for cards, I/O brackets, and motherboard layout requirements.
AGP: Accelerated Graphics Port
Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) developed by Intel based on PCI, is an interface specification for the throughput demands of 3-D graphics. Rather than using the PCI bus for graphics data, AGP introduces a dedicated point-to-point channel so that the graphics controller can directly access main memory. The AGP channel is 32 bits wide and runs at 66 MHz with a total bandwidth of 266 MBps. AGP also supports two optional faster modes, with throughputs of 533 MBps and 1.07 GBps. In addition, AGP allows 3-D textures to be stored in main memory rather than video memory.
AIDC: Automatic Identification and Data Capture
Automatic Identification and Data Capture (or Collection) (AIDC) is a general term describing the process of capturing or collecting data via automatic means, for example, using Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID), bar code scanning, smart cards, OCR or magnetic strips to collect data, and then storing that data in a microprocessor-controlled device, such as a computer.
Allocated memory
Allocated memory is the amount of RAM allocated to different programs and applications. Memory could be allocated statically when the program is installed with a fix amount or dynamically during run time when needed.
Alpha Processor
Alpha Processor is RISC processor developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (now part of HP) and used in their workstations and servers.
Alpha Test
Alpha test is the first formal test of a newly developed hardware or software product by internal people. The key objectives of the alpha test are functionality confirmation and bug identification. When the first round of bugs has been fixed, the product goes into beta test with actual users and customers.
Alpha version
Alpha version is an early version of a software or hardware product, which passed the Alpha test. Alpha version may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final release. Typically, software goes through two stages of testing before it is considered finished. The first stage, called alpha testing which is done by internal users. The second stage, called beta testing , generally involves a limited number of external users.
