Glossary

L

level 2 cache: See cache.

Light Emitting Diode (LED): A semiconductor device that emits light when a current is applied.

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD): Liquid crystal sealed between two sheets of glass coated with transparent conducting material. The viewing- side coating is etched into character forming segments with leads that extend to the edge of the glass. Applying a voltage between the glass sheets darkens the liquid crystal to provide contrast to lighted portions of the display.

LSI: Large Scale Integration. 1) A technology that allows the inclusion of up to 100,000 simple logic gates on a single chip.

2) An integrated circuit that uses the large scale integration.

M

main board: See motherboard.

MDA: Monochrome Display Adapter. A video display protocol defined by the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter and its associated circuitry for direct drive TTL displays that supports a monochrome 720x350 text mode.

megabyte (MB): A unit of data storage equal to 1024 kilobytes. See also kilobyte.

megahertz: A unit of wave frequency that equals 1 million cycles per second. See also hertz.

menu: A software interface that displays a list of options on the screen. Also called a screen.

microprocessor: A hardware component contained in a single integrated circuit that carries out instructions. Also called the central processing unit (CPU), one of the main parts of the computer.

MMX: Refers to microprocessors with additional instructions beyond the x86 standard. The instructions were developed on the basis of multimedia code requirements and thus improve the performance of multimedia applications.

mode: A method of operation, for example, the boot mode or the resume mode.

modem: Derived from modulator/demodulator, a device that converts (modulates) digital data for transmission over telephone lines and then converts modulated data (demodulates) to digital format where received.

monitor: A device that uses rows and columns of pixels to display alphanumeric characters or graphic images. See CRT.

TOSHIBA TE2300

10