Select the first letter of the word from the list above to jump to appropriate section of the glossary or type the term on which you want to search.

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PCIe

(PCI Express) a high-speed peripheral interconnect from Intel introduced in 2002. Note that although sometimes abbreviated "PCX," PCI Express is not the same as "PCI-X" (see PCI-SIG and PCI-X for comparison). As a result of the confusion, "PCI-E" or "PCIE" is the accepted abbreviation. Initially used for high-speed display adapters, and intending to eventually replace the PCI and AGP buses entirely, PCI Express was designed to match the higher speeds of today's CPUs. It can accommodate Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and even support chip-to-chip transfers.

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PCMCIA

(Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) an international standards body and trade association with over 500 member companies founded in 1989 to establish standards for Integrated Circuit cards and to promote interchangeability among mobile computers where durability, low power, and small size were critical. Among the standards a card needs for PCMCIA compliance are uniform thickness and size.

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PCS

(Personal Communications Services) refers to wireless services that emerged after the U.S. government auctioned commercial licenses in 1994 and 1995. This radio spectrum in the 1.8-2GHz range is typically used for digital cellular transmission that competes with analog and digital services in the 800MHz and 900MHz bands.

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PDA

(Personal Digital Assistant) a generic term for any number of electronic computing or communications devices that are able to act as cellular phones, fax senders or personal organizers. Although somewhat expensive, PDAs are becoming more sophisticated and easier to use.

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PDF

(Portable Document File) a standard for electronic document distribution developed by Adobe Systems. PDF is a universal file format that preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colors, and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed exactly as intended by anyone with Adobe Acrobat Reader. Acrobat Reader is freely available for downloading from many sources on the World Wide Web.

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pen

a drawing tool used in a paint program.

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pen computer

a computer (usually hand held) that uses an electronic stylus for input.

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Pentium

refers to a number of microprocessors manufactured by Intel corporation, including the first in the line introduced in 1993, the Pentium microprocessor, the Pentium Pro, the Pentium II, and most recently, the Pentium III. With the introduction of each successive Pentium product, processing efficiency, speed and power has dramatically increased.

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peripheral

short for peripheral device, a hardware device such as a keyboard, printer, scanner, or display monitor connected to a computer.

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Perl

a popular programming language developed by Larry Wall primarily for processing CGI scripts.