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Glossary of Terms
X64 Xcelera-HS PX8 User's Manual
Glossary of Terms
Bandwidth
Describes the measure of data transfer capacity. PCI devices must share the maximum PCI bus
bandwidth when transferring data to and from system memory or other devices.
CAM
Sapera camera file that uses the file extension CCA by default. Files using the CCA extension, also
called CAM files (CAMERA files), contain all parameters which describe the camera video signal
characteristics and operation modes (i.e. what the camera outputs).
Channel
Camera data path that includes all parts of a video line.
Checksum
A value used to ensure data is stored without error. It is created by calculating the binary values
in a block of data using some algorithm and storing the results with the data.
Contiguous memory
A block of physical memory, occupying consecutive addresses.
Firmware
Software such as a board driver that is stored in nonvolatile memory mounted on that board.
Frame buffer
An area of memory used to hold a frame of image data. A frame buffer may exist on the acquisition
hardware or be allocated by the acquisition hardware device driver in host system memory.
Grab
Acquiring an image frame by means of a frame grabber.
Host
Refers to the computer system that supports the installed frame grabber.
Host buffer
Refers to a frame buffer allocated in the physical memory of the host computer system.
LSB
Least Significant Bit in a binary data word.
MSB
Most Significant Bit in a binary data word.
PCIe
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express. The PCIe bus is a high-performance expansion bus
intended for interconnecting add-in boards, controllers, and processor/memory systems.
Pixel
Picture Element. The number of pixels describes the number of digital samples taken of the analog
video signal. The number of pixels per video line by the number of active video lines describes the
acquisition image resolution. The binary size of each pixel (i.e., 8-bits, 15-bits, 24-bits) defines the
number of gray levels or colors possible for each pixel.
