Glossary

A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence "field-programmable". The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). (Circuit diagrams were previously used to specify the configuration, as they were for ASICs, but this is increasingly rare.)

FE-bits memory — working with memory in a technique when every memory cell is given a separate bit that allows to manipulate this memory cell's state in a manner of locking or releasing. 0 value means an empty cell which is still not used. 1 value means a cell was used and full.

Minix3 OS — Open source Operating system (with well documented source code), based on micro kernel. Minix3 complies with Posix standard and has strong reliability (hardware drivers and user components are separated from each other and stand apart from the OS kernel). The OS is flexible and secure.

 The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines the application programming interface (API), along with command line shells and utility interfaces, for software compatibility with variants of Unix and other operating systems.

Multithreading (lightweight threads) — in opposite to heavy weight threads the context of light weight threads is much smaller so overhead expenses to switch between light threads are much less.

Compact core  — single very simple processor described using VHDL language and designed as a FPGA circuit.