Welcome to the electronics glossary in our library!

The following glossary entries were abstracted from the book, Bebop to the Boolean Boogie (An Unconventional Guide to Electronics), with the kind permission of LLH Technology Publishing, Eagle Rock, VA, USA                          ( to return to the main glossary.)

A 3:5 valence high-speed semiconductor formed from a mixture of gallium and arsenic. GaAs transistors are approximately eight times faster than their silicon equivalents and use approximately one tenth of the power, but the material is difficult to manufacture and to work with.

A 3:5 valence high-speed semiconductor formed from a mixture of gallium and arsenic. GaAs transistors are approximately eight times faster than their silicon equivalents and use approximately one tenth of the power, but the material is difficult to manufacture and to work with.

An electronic engineer's joke, also familiar to the writers of computer programs.

An application-specific integrated circuit in which the manufacturer pre-fabricates devices containing arrays of unconnected components organized in groups called basic cells. The designer specifies the function of the device in terms of cells from the cell library and the connections between them, and the manufacturer then generates the masks used to create the metalization layers.

Refers to the size of structures created on an integrated circuit. The structures typically referenced are the width of the tracks and the length of the transistor's channels; the dimensions of other features are derived as ratios of these structures.

Unit qualifier (symbol = G) representing one thousand million, or 10⁹. For example, 3GHz stands for 3 x 10⁹ Hertz.

An electronic engineer's joke, also familiar to the writers of computer programs.

Simple logic gates used to interface more complex functions together.

An extremely thin layer of gold with a thickness measured on the molecular level which is either electroplated or chemically plated( ) onto a surface.

A sequence of binary values in which each pair of adjacent values differs by only a single bit; for example, 00, 01, 11, 10.

Unfired, malleable ceramic.

A conducting layer in, or on, a substrate providing a grounding, or reference, point for components. There may be several ground planes separated by insulating layers.

A Boolean expression associated with a state transition in a state diagram or state table. The expression must be satisfied for that state transition to be executed.

A form of functional test in which the operator is guided in the probing of a circuit to isolate a faulty component or track.

A form of optical interconnect, in which optical waveguides are fabricated directly on the substrate of a multichip module. These waveguides can be created using variations on standard opto-lithographic thin-film processes.

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