Glossary-11
GLOSSARY
special-purpose memory A partition of memory used for storing the interrupt
vectors, PTS vectors, chip configuration bytes, and
several reserved locations.
standard interrupt Any maskable interrupt that is assigned to the
interrupt controller for processing by an interrupt
service routine.
state time (or state) The basic time unit of the microcontroller; the
combined period of the two internal timing signals,
PH1 and PH2. Because the microcontroller can
operate at many frequencies, this manual defines time
requirements in terms of state times rather than in
specific units of time.
successive approximation An A/D conversion method that uses a binary search
to arrive at the best digital representation of an analog
input.
tLowercase “t” represents the period of the internal
clock.
temperature coefficient Change in the stated variable for each degree
Centigrade of temperature change.
temperature drift The change in a specification due to a change in
temperature. Temperature drift can be calculated by
using the temperature coefficient for the specification.
terminal-based characteristic An actual characteristic that has been translated and
scaled to remove zero-offset error and full-scale
error. A terminal-based characteristic resembles an
actual characteristic with zero-offset error and full-
scale error removed.
transfer function A graph of output code versus input voltage; the
characteristic of the A/D converter.
transfer function errors Errors inherent in an analog-to-digital conversion
process: quantizing error, zero-offset error, full-scale
error, differential nonlinearity, and nonlinearity.
Errors that are hardware-dependent, rather than being
inherent in the process itself, include feedthrough,
repeatability, channel-to-channel matching, off-
isolation, and VCC rejection errors.
UART Universal asynchronous receiver and transmitter. A
part of the serial I/O port.