Matrox Electronic Systems II manual Backplane, Bandwidth, Bit, Bus, Color component

120 Appendix G: Glossary

■ASIC

Application-specific integrated circuit. An integrated circuit custom-made to meet the requirements of a specific application. It integrates several digital and/or analog functions into a single die. This results in a reduction in cost, board area, and power consumption, while improving performance when compared to an equivalent implementation using off-the-shelf components.

■Backplane

A circuit board that acts as a pathway between multiple boards. For example, if a backplane is inserted between the VMChannels of two Meteor-II boards, the boards can share data through their VMChannel.

■Band

One of the surfaces of a buffer. A grayscale image requires just one band. A color image requires three bands, one for each color component.

■Bandwidth

A term describing the capacity to transfer data. Greater bandwidth is needed to sustain a higher transfer rate. Greater bandwidth can be achieved, for example, by using a wider bus.

■Bit

A digit of a binary number. Images are described as 1-bit,

8-bit, 16-bit, etc. The numbers indicate the bits available to store the value of each pixel in the image.

■Bus

A pathway along which signals are sent, generally in two directions, for communication of data.

■Color component

One of the components that make up a color space. Typically, each component of a color image is stored in a separate band of a multi-band buffer.