Glossary

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a model developed by Gartner Group to analyze the direct and indirect costs of owning and using hardware and software. Managers of enterprise systems use various versions of TCO to lower costs while increasing the benefits of information technology deployments.

What it is: A set of formulas to calculate how much value a company delivers from its assets and investments, and the money its investors put in.

Why you need to know it: When making an investment in IT projects and equipment, you need to be able to measure and demonstrate the value of that investment.

The Intel® XScale™ microarchitecture is based on a new core which is compliant with ARM version 5TE. The microarchitecture surrounds the core with instruction and data memory manage-ment units; instruction, data, and mini-data caches; write, fill, pend, and branch target buffers; power management, performance monitoring, debug, and JTAG units; coprocessor interface; 32K caches; MMUs; BTB; MAC coprocessor; and core memory bus.

The above description was taken from the Intel® web site. Most people almost refere to Xscale™ as a processor for mobile devices, which is wrong. The term Xscale™ summarizes a group of processors and a technology that is meant for mobile devices. At the time the XScala™ product range contains the following 'so-called' applications processor types.

If this diploma thesis referes to XScale™ it is allways refering to the PXA250 applications processor, which includes I/O facilities for USB, MMC/SD storage cards, IrDA/UART, Bluetooth and PCMCIA/CF cards.

Universal Serial Bus, or USB, is a computer standard designed to eliminate the guesswork in connecting peripherals to your PC. Currently, the USB Specification, Revision 2.0, covers three speeds 480 Mbps, 12 Mbps, and 1.5 Mbps. The term "Hi-Speed USB" refers to just the 480 Mbps portion of the USB Specification. We now use the term "USB" to refer to the 12Mbps and 1.5Mbps speeds.

The above explanation was taken from the Intel® web site.

The MultiMediaCard standard grew out of a joint development between SanDisk Corporation and Siemens AG/Infineon Technologies AG, and was introduced in November 1997. MultiMediaCards weigh less than two grams and, about the size of a postage stamp, are the world's smallest (24mm x 32mm x 1.4 mm) removable solid-state memory solutions for mobile applications, such as MP-3 music players, portable video games, laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile telephones and digital cameras. These convenient, reliable, rugged and lightweight standardized data carriers store up to 64 Mbytes, sufficient for 64 minutes of MP-3 digital music, or approximately 40,000 book pages.

The above information was taken from the MultiMediaCard Association web site.

Both MMC and SD cards provide encryption capabilities for protected content to ensure secure distribution of copyrighted material, such as digital music, video, and eBooks, but SD cards are available with storage capacities as high as 128MB, with a 512MB SD card expected to be available by late 2002.

SD cards are more rugged than traditional storage media. They have an operating shock rating (basically, the height you can drop them from and still have them work) of 2,000 Gs, compared to a 100-200 G rating for the mechanical drive of the typical portable computing device. Both MMC and SD cards use metal connector contacts, instead of the traditional pins-and-plugs, so they aren't as prone to damage during handling.

IrDA Control is an infrared communication standard that allows cordless peripherals such as keyboards, mice, game pads, joysticks and pointing devices units to interact with many types of intelligent host devices. Host devices include PC's, home appliances, game machines and television/web set top boxes.

The above information was taken from the INFRARED DATA ASSOCIATION® web site.

Unlike many other wireless standards, the Bluetooth wireless specification includes both link layer and application layer definitions for product developers which supports data, voice, and content-centric applications. Radios that comply with the Bluetooth wireless specification operate in the unlicensed, 2.4 GHz radio spectrum ensuring communication compatibility worldwide. These radios use a spread spectrum, frequency hopping, full-duplex signal at up to 1600 hops/sec. The signal hops among 79 frequencies at 1 MHz intervals to give a high degree of interference immunity. Up to seven simultaneous connections can established and maintained.

The above information was taken from the The Official Bluetooth Website.

The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was established in 1991 to standardize a particular form of add-in memory cards for mobile computers. Since then, the PCMCIA has grown to include more than 400 member companies which produce a wide range of compact add-in functions ("PC Cards") for computers. The most advanced of these functions are being implemented using a technology called CardBus.

The above information was taken from the PCMCIA web site.

CompactFlash® is a very small removable mass storage device. First introduced in 1994 by SanDisk Corporation, CF™ cards weigh a half ounce and are the size of a matchbook. They provide complete PCMCIA-ATA functionality and compatibility plus TrueIDE functionality compatible with ATA/ATAPI-4. At 43mm (1.7") x 36mm (1.4") x 3.3mm (0.13"), the device's thickness is less than one-half of a current PCMCIA Type II card. It is actually one-fourth the volume of a PCMCIA card. Compared to a 68-pin PCMCIA card, a CF card has 50 pins but still conforms to PCMCIA ATA specs. It can be easily slipped into a passive 68-pin Type II adapter card that fully meets PCMCIA electrical and mechanical interface specifications.

The above information was taken from the CompactFlash Association web site.

If people are talking about WLAN, an acronym for Wireless Local Area Network, they are usualy refering to the IEEE specs 802.11a and 802.11b (Wi-Fi 2.4 and 5 GHz). Wi-Fi in turn stands for wireless fidelity.

The IEEE 802.11b specification allows for the wireless transmission of approximately 11 Mbps of raw data at indoor distances from several dozen to several hundred feet and outdoor distances of several to tens of miles as an unlicensed use of the 2.4 GHz band. The distance depends on impediments, materials, and line of sight.

dtF/AF is a working title for an application framework situable for mobile devices, developed by the company sLAB.

dtF/AF provides data persistency for mobile devices, data replication- and synchronization mechanisms for mobile devices, a conflict resolution engine, a GUI presentation engine that provides generative user interfaces optimized for mobile device displays, backoffice-connectors to common lagacy systems and a device management server that keeps care of rolling out software components to mobile devices.

The working title dtF/AF is supposed to be replaced by a registered trademark.

Symbian's advanced open standard operating system for data enabled mobile phones. It includes a multi-tasking multithreaded core, a user interface framework, data services enablers, application engines and integrated PIM functionality and wireless communications.

The above explanation was taken from the Symbian glossary which can be found at the Symbian web site.

In the past, Symbian OS was called EPOC, but that term has become depricated.

Personal Digital Assistant - If people are refering to a PDA they are almost refering to a mobile device with limited constraints such as a small display, limited storage cpacities, limited memory and a small sized processor. A good example for a PDA is the Palm Pilot.

Handhelds are mid-sized or fully-fledged mobile computing devices. Usually those devices are having a processor with a computing speed of approximatly 200MHz or up. A Handheld usually is equiped with RAM up to 64MByte and various expansion slots such as a CF card socket. with such capabilities those devices could be compared to PCs like an Intel® x486 or a Pentium™ I.

The term PocketPC emerged after Microsoft® introduced its Windows CE operating system on Handheld devices. If a person referes to a PocketPC he usually referes to a mobile device that runs a flavor of Windows CE. Allthough since a while there are also devices available, which ship with Linux or a different OS.

Smart Phones are enhanced Cell Phones, running an advanced operating system that supports Threads, includes improved memory handling libraries and provides some sort of a file system. In the context of iChilli™ it is most notably that those mobile devices are allways including a Java™ VM.