490 technical terms and definitions
algorithm, algorithm explained, algorithms for beginners, how algorithms work, step-by-step procedure, input and output, binary search, linear search, correctness, efficiency, pseudocode, finite steps, recipe for computers
An algorithm is a precise, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or completing a task, written clearly enough that it can be followed without any guessing — and it is…
API, application programming interface, what is an api, API endpoint, web API, REST API, JSON, request and response, API explained, how APIs work
An API (Application Programming Interface) is an agreed set of rules that lets one program ask another program for data or an action, without either one needing to know how…
npu explained, neural processing unit, npu vs gpu vs cpu, on-device ai chip
An NPU, or Neural Processing Unit, is a chip or chip block built specifically to run the repetitive math behind neural networks — mostly large batches of matrix multiplication…
osat semiconductor meaning, outsourced assembly and test explained, osat vs foundry, chip packaging and testing company
An OSAT — short for Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test — is a company that specializes in packaging finished silicon dies and testing completed chips, handling…
transformer attention explained, query key value attention, kv cache explained, multi query attention, grouped query attention, self attention transformer
The attention mechanism is the calculation that lets a transformer decide, for every token it's producing, which earlier tokens actually matter right now — and it's exactly what…
beamforming explained, beamforming 5g meaning, how does beamforming work, beamforming antenna array
Beamforming is a wireless antenna technique that combines signals from multiple antenna elements so they reinforce each other in a specific direction, effectively focusing…
bluetooth, BLE, bluetooth low energy, pairing, wireless, short range, earbuds, wireless mouse, 2.4 GHz, bluetooth vs wifi, how bluetooth works
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that lets two nearby devices connect directly to each other and exchange data over radio waves — it is how your phone talks…
chip packaging explained, semiconductor packaging meaning, advanced packaging chiplets, what is a chip package
Chip packaging is the process of taking a finished, tested silicon die and encasing it in a protective housing with external connectors — the familiar black rectangle with metal…
clock speed explained, cpu ghz meaning, what is clock frequency, clock speed vs performance
Clock speed, measured in gigahertz (GHz), is how many times per second a chip's internal clock ticks, and each tick synchronizes one step of work across the chip's circuits — but…
chemical mechanical polishing explained, planarization semiconductor, cmp dishing erosion, copper damascene cmp, preston equation polishing
Chemical-Mechanical Polishing (CMP) is what flattens the wafer back out after deposition and etch leave it bumpy. Every layer built through the CVD-lithography-etch loop leaves…
compute in memory explained, in memory computing ai, compute in memory chip meaning, what does compute in memory mean
Compute-in-memory is a chip architecture approach that performs certain calculations directly inside memory itself, rather than following the traditional design of moving data out…
dynamic batching llm serving, in-flight batching explained, llm throughput scheduling, static vs continuous batching, ai serving scheduler
Continuous batching is the serving-system technique that decides which requests actually get processed together on any given decode step, and it's the layer where every…
damascene process explained, dual damascene semiconductor, copper electroplating BEOL, barrier metal liner copper, low-k dielectric interconnect
Copper interconnect is the wiring that connects millions or billions of individual transistors into an actual working circuit. Once the transistors themselves are built through…
cpu cache explained, l1 l2 l3 cache, how does cache memory work, cache hit miss
CPU cache is a small amount of extremely fast memory built directly into the processor to hide an enormous speed gap: a modern CPU can perform an operation in a fraction of…
critical dimension explained, cd semiconductor meaning, critical dimension lithography, what does cd mean in chip manufacturing
Critical dimension, often abbreviated CD, refers to the smallest, most precisely controlled feature size on a chip — typically the width of the narrowest transistor gate or wire…
cryogenic plasma etch explained, high aspect ratio sidewall control, low temperature etch semiconductor, tsv etch profile, gaa release etch sidewall bowing
Cryo etch is plasma etching performed with the wafer cooled to extremely low temperatures, and it exists to solve an etch-profile problem that ordinary room-temperature…
chemical vapor deposition explained, CVD vs ALD semiconductor, PECVD LPCVD thermal CVD, step coverage conformality, thin film deposition chip fabrication
Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) is how a fab builds material up on the wafer instead of carving it away. Where plasma etch removes everything outside the mask, CVD does…
dof lithography explained, depth of focus meaning chip, lithography focus tolerance, dof semiconductor
Depth of focus, or DOF, is the vertical range above and below a lithography system's ideal focal plane within which a pattern can still be exposed sharply enough to be usable…
all reduce explained, ring allreduce vs tree allreduce, gradient synchronization gpu cluster, collective communication ai training, training cluster interconnect bandwidth
Distributed training is how a single model gets trained across thousands of chips at once, and the mechanism that makes it work — collective communication, most commonly…
deep ultraviolet lithography explained, duv vs euv, duv lithography meaning, 193nm lithography
DUV, or deep ultraviolet lithography, is the workhorse lithography technology that patterned chips for decades before EUV arrived, using a longer wavelength of ultraviolet light…
edge ai explained, edge ai vs cloud ai, on-device ai meaning, what does edge ai mean
Edge AI runs a model directly on the device that generated the data — a phone, a camera, a car — instead of sending that data to a remote data center and waiting for a response.…
euv lithography explained, extreme ultraviolet lithography meaning, how does euv work, euv chip manufacturing
EUV lithography is a chipmaking technique that uses extreme ultraviolet light — with a wavelength roughly fourteen times shorter than the light used in older lithography methods…
fabless company meaning, fabless vs idm, fabless semiconductor model, what does fabless mean
A fabless company designs chips but doesn't own or operate the factories that manufacture them, instead paying a foundry to fabricate its designs — a business model that lets…
federated learning explained, federated ai training meaning, federated learning privacy, what does federated learning do
Federated learning is a way of training AI models across many separate devices or locations without ever centralizing the underlying data — each device trains on its own local…
flip chip explained, flip chip vs wire bonding, flip chip bonding meaning, what does flip chip mean
Flip chip packaging is a method of connecting a silicon die to its package by flipping the die upside down and attaching it directly via an array of tiny solder bumps across its…
high k dielectric explained, gate leakage quantum tunneling, silicon dioxide gate insulator, transistor gate dielectric, gate oxide thickness scaling
Gate oxide is the thin insulating layer sitting directly between a transistor's gate and its channel, and its whole job is to let the gate control the channel electrically without…
hbm explained, hbm meaning ai chips, high bandwidth memory vs regular memory, what does hbm stand for
High bandwidth memory, or HBM, is a type of memory built by stacking multiple memory dies vertically and connecting them with extremely short, wide internal connections, achieving…
immersion lithography explained, water immersion lithography meaning, duv immersion, immersion lithography vs euv
Immersion lithography is a technique that places a thin layer of purified water between the lens and the wafer during DUV lithography, using water's optical properties to bend…
ion implantation explained, semiconductor doping process, boron phosphorus arsenic dopant, spike anneal activation, source drain junction implant
Ion implantation is how a fab actually changes silicon's electrical personality, not just its shape. Etch and CVD sculpt and build up physical structure, but neither one turns…
ler lithography explained, line edge roughness meaning, chip manufacturing edge roughness, what does ler mean
Line edge roughness, or LER, refers to the small, irregular waviness along the edges of a patterned feature on a chip — instead of a perfectly smooth, straight line, real…
prefill vs decode explained, kv cache transformer, roofline model ai accelerator, llm serving throughput latency, memory bandwidth bound inference
LLM inference is running an already-trained model forward to answer a live request, and it behaves nothing like training on the hardware underneath it. Training adjusts a model's…
semiconductor metrology explained, wafer inspection defect detection, CD-SEM overlay scatterometry, statistical process control fab, OCD critical dimension measurement
Metrology and inspection are how a fab knows whether the last 60 process steps actually worked, without waiting until the finished chip fails to find out. After nearly every…
mmwave explained, millimeter wave 5g meaning, mmwave vs sub-6, what does mmwave mean
Millimeter wave, often called mmWave, refers to a very high-frequency band of radio spectrum used by some 5G networks, offering dramatically more available bandwidth and faster…
mimo wireless explained, mimo meaning 5g, multiple input multiple output, what does mimo stand for
MIMO, short for multiple-input multiple-output, is a wireless technology that uses multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to send and receive several data streams…
mixed precision training explained, ai training precision meaning, mixed precision ai model, what does mixed precision mean
Mixed precision training is a technique for training AI models that uses lower-precision numbers for most calculations to gain speed and memory savings, while selectively keeping…
moe llm architecture explained, sparse expert routing, moe vs dense model, expert router transformer, moe memory capacity accelerator
Mixture-of-experts (MoE) is an architecture where a model has far more total parameters than a comparably-sized dense model, but only activates a small fraction of them for any…
ai model distillation explained, knowledge distillation meaning, teacher student model ai, what does model distillation mean
Model distillation is a technique for training a smaller, faster "student" AI model to mimic the behavior of a larger, more capable "teacher" model, transferring much of…
model quantization explained, ai model quantization meaning, quantization neural network, why quantize ai models
Model quantization is a technique that shrinks an AI model by representing its internal numbers with less precision — for example, using 8-bit values instead of the 32-bit values…
moore's law explained, moores law meaning, is moores law dead, moores law transistor count
Moore's Law is the observation, made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, that the number of transistors that can be economically packed onto a chip roughly doubles every…
non-recurring engineering cost, chip nre explained, semiconductor nre meaning, nre vs per-unit cost
Non-recurring engineering cost, or NRE cost, refers to the one-time upfront expense of designing and preparing a chip for manufacturing — covering things like design work…
opc lithography explained, optical proximity correction meaning, computational lithography opc, what does opc mean in chip manufacturing
Optical proximity correction, or OPC, is a computational technique that deliberately distorts the pattern on a photomask in precise, calculated ways so that after light…
photoresist explained, photoresist lithography meaning, positive vs negative photoresist, how does photoresist work
Photoresist is a light-sensitive chemical coating applied to a silicon wafer before lithography, one that chemically changes when exposed to light so that, after development, it…
plasma etching explained, RIE vs ICP etch, anisotropic etch semiconductor, dry etch process chip fabrication, plasma etch selectivity endpoint
Plasma etch is how a chip factory carves the pattern from a photomask into the actual silicon, layer by layer. After lithography exposes a resist pattern on the wafer, that…
poly gate etch explained, gate critical dimension control, polysilicon gate fabrication, gate etch stop on oxide, transistor gate patterning
Polysilicon etch is the process step that carves polycrystalline silicon into precise gate shapes, and for decades it was the single most critical etch step in the entire fab…
int8 fp8 int4 explained, llm quantization accuracy tradeoff, weight only quantization, activation quantization inference, quantization memory bandwidth ai accelerator
Quantization is the practice of storing and computing a model's weights and activations in fewer bits than the 16 or 32 bits they were trained in, trading a small amount…
quantum computing explained, what is a qubit, quantum computing meaning, quantum vs classical computing
Quantum computing is a fundamentally different approach to computation that uses quantum bits, or "qubits," instead of the ordinary bits every classical chip relies on — where…
ram explained, ram vs storage, random access memory, how does ram work
RAM, or random access memory, is the fast, temporary workspace a computer uses to hold whatever it's actively working on — open programs, loaded data, the current state of a game…
sti semiconductor explained, transistor isolation fab process, sti etch fill cmp, front end of line isolation, sti trench oxide fill
Shallow trench isolation (STI) is the structure that keeps neighboring transistors electrically separate, and it's one of the earliest steps in the front-end-of-line process that…
draft model verification llm, speculative sampling explained, llm decode throughput optimization, draft and verify inference, accelerated token generation
Speculative decoding is a way to generate multiple tokens per expensive decode step instead of just one, by letting a small, cheap "draft" model guess ahead and having the large…
explain the cloud, what does the cloud mean, the cloud, cloud explained, cloud for beginners, data center, cloud provider, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, elasticity, scale on demand, pay as you go, servers
"The cloud" is a friendly name for using computers you do not own — powerful machines sitting in someone else's data center — over the internet, instead of doing everything on…