“back-face culling” to “byte order”

back-face culling

(n.) The process of omitting the drawing of one or more back-facing polygons (which cannot be seen by the viewer), thus increasing drawing speed.

back-facing polygon

(n.) A polygon with a normal vector that is pointed away from the viewer. Often the back-facing polygon is occluded, hidden from view by opaque polygons that are closer to the viewer.

background

(1) (n.) On a UNIX® system, the process of freeing the terminal for other uses while another task is running. See also background process.

(2) (n.) The main color of a terminal screen on which contrasting characters and graphics are displayed.

background process

(n.) A command that a user has directed the system to work on while the user continues to type commands to the command interpreter.

BARB

board arbiter.

baseline sequential codec

(n.) A sequential coder/decoder that is defined by the JPEG standard. Baseline sequential codec handles images with 8-bit samples and uses Huffman coding for its entropy coding.

BCS

(n.) Binary Compatibility Standard.

Bean

(n.) In the Java^TM look and feel, a reusable software component. Beans can be combined to create an application.

Benchmark Interchange Format

(BIF) (n.) In computer graphics, a standardized file structure for specifying the geometry of a particular data set from a particular application and for specifying user interactions. This standard enables the same data set to run on dissimilar vendor systems. Also, BIF promotes testing efficiency.

Benchmark Report Format

(BRF) (n.) In computer graphics, a standard format for reporting benchmark results. This format provides the purchaser with a consistent data-tracking system for comparing hardware platforms.

benchmark timing methodology

(BTM) (n.) In computer graphics, a method of measuring the time that is required to run the purchaser's Benchmark Interchange Format (BIF) program. This method ensures that the viewing pipelines of dissimilar graphics libraries are measured in a consistent manner. The BTM provides the conditions and parameters necessary to determine the length of time that is required to run the requested benchmark.

Bezier curve

(n.) In computer graphics, a curve that is created from endpoints and two or more control points which serve as positions for the shape of the curve. Often used in mechanical computer-aided design mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) applications.

Bezier patch

(n.) In computer graphics, a portion of a 3-D surface that is generated by using the Bezier curve algorithm. Two 2-D Bezier curves are drawn through selected control points. The 3-D curve is then interpolated between the control points. See also interpolation.

BIF

(n.) Benchmark Interchange Format.

bilinear patch

(n.) A 2-D surface patch that can be warped into a 3-D surface. Some set of points in 2-D space forms the parameters of the patch. These points are connected by straight lines. The patch shape is warped to the surface, but the lines themselves do not warp, and thus remain linear.

bind

(v.) To link variables and instructions that have symbolic addresses toabsolute addresses (after compiling).

BIND

(n.) Berkeley Internet Name Domain.

BIOS

(n.) basic input/output system.

bit block transfer

(n.) A raster operation that moves a block of bits from one location in the frame buffer to another location. The block of bits represents some portion of an image or a scene. See also raster ops (ROP).

bit BLT

(pronounced “bit blit”) (n.) See bit block transfer.

bit depth

(n.) The amount of information (in bits) that is used to represent a pixel. A bit depth of 8 supports a maximum of 256 colors. A bit depth of 24 supports a maximum of 16,777,216 colors.

bit gravity

(n.) In the X protocol, the attraction of window contents to some region of a resized window. For example, an application that draws a graph might request that the contents be moved into the lower-left corner if the window is resized. The result is that the origin of the graph always appears in the lower-left corner. See also window gravity.

bitmapped graphics

(n.) Those graphics that associate color with bits per pixel. Historically, bitmapping is the process of associating each pixel on a screen with one or more bits in memory.

bitmapped screen

(n.) A screen in which a memory location is assigned for every pixel on the screen.

bit plane

(n.) The hypothetical two-dimensional plane that contains a bit in memory for each pixel on the raster. For any raster image, at least one bit plane is in frame buffer memory. Each bit plane has a one-to-one mapping of bits to pixels. Additional bit planes exist for some raster systems. For instance, a 24-bit system has 24 bit planes. The storage structure that represents the bit plane in memory is an array.

blending

(n.) In computer graphics, combining two color components into one, usually as a linear interpolation between the two components. The alpha value helps determine how the components are combined.

Boolean

(adj.) Characteristic of an expression or variable that can have only a true or false value. The Java^TM programming language provides the Boolean type and the literal values true and false.

boot

(bootstrap) (v.) To load the system software into memory and start it.

boot environment

(n.) A collection of mandatory file systems (disk slices and mount points) that are critical to the operation of the Solaris^TM Operating System. These disk slices might be on the same disk or distributed across multiple disks. The active boot environment is the one that is currently booted. Exactly one active boot environment can be booted. An inactive boot environment is not currently booted, but can be in a state of waiting for activation on the next reboot.

bootlog-cgi

(n.) The CGI program that enables a web server to collect and store remote client booting and installation console messages during a WAN boot installation.

boot PROM

(n.) In Sun^TM workstations, memory that contains the PROM monitor program, a command interpreter which is used for booting, a reset operation, low-level configuration, and simple test procedures.

boot server

(n.) A server system that provides client systems on the network with the programs and information that they need to start.

bounding box

(n.) For a raster object, the smallest rectangle that completely encloses all the pixels that are not fully transparent. Often used in fill algorithms in which tests reveal which pixels are inside and which are outside a polygon. Also called extent.

bpp

(bytes per pixel) (n.) The parallel port on the SPARCprinter^TM SBus printer card. The term also refers to the device driver that drives the port.

BRF

See Benchmark Report Format.

browse

(v.) To view the contents of a database or list of files without editing the information.

browser

See web browser.

B-spline curve

(n.) A curve that is defined by a series of control points. The control points define a series of continuous Bezier curves.

buffer

(1) (n.) A storage device that holds data to be transmitted to another device.

(2) (n.) A temporary work area or storage area that is set up within the system memory. Buffers are often used by programs, such as editors, that access and alter text or data frequently.

bus arbitration system

(n.) On Sun^TM server systems with at least two SuperSPARC^TM modules, a mechanism for deciding which processor has control of the system resources at any moment.

bus cycle

(n.) On the SBus, a series of clock cycles that begin, for example, in a DVMA master, with a particular master receiving a grant. In all instances, the clock cycles conclude with the address strobe being unasserted by the SBus controller. For DVMA masters, a bus cycle is divided into two phases: a translation cycle and a slave cycle. However, in a CPU master, the translation cycle does not occur as part of the bus cycle.

bus device

(n.) A device that connects to the bus and has an assigned device address and/or priority level.

bus error

(n.) A process that has attempted to access an area of memory that is restricted or does not exist. See also segmentation fault.

bus priority

(n.) A scheme for allocating preferential access to a bus.

bus request

(n.) A request from a device on the bus for control of the bus to become the bus master and to start an interrupt or perform a data transfer.

bus sizing

(n.) On the SBus, a transfer mode in which a slave requests the master to turn a word transfer into 2 halfwords, or 4 byte transfers. Each transfer is performed by using a separate bus cycle. The first bus cycle is called the original bus cycle. Remaining bus cycles are called follow-on bus cycles.

bus watcher

(BW) (n.) On Sun^TM server systems, a mechanism that converts XDBus signals to XBus signals and passes them to the Module XBus Cache Controller (MXCC) on the processor module. Together, the bus watchers and MXCC control the flow of information between the XDBus and the processors (and their respective cache SRAMs).

button binding

(n.) The association of a mouse button operation with a particular behavior.

button grab

(n.) In the X protocol, a pointer grab that occurs only when a specified set of keys or buttons is held down. See also mouse grab.

byte

(n.) A sequence of 8 bits. The Java^TM programming language provides a corresponding byte type. See also character.

byte acknowledgment

(n.) On the SBus, an acknowledgment to indicate that the slave has read or written a byte from the most-significant byte of the data lines. If the transfer size is greater than a byte, the master that is initiating the transfer can perform bus sizing.

byte addressing

(n.) On the SBus, a determination that the smallest addressable unit of information is a byte.

bytecode

(n.) Machine-independent code that is generated by the Java^TM compiler and executed by the Java interpreter.

byte order

(n.) The order in which bytes of data are stored in memory. The byte order is hardware dependent.