Page 113 - Electrical Engineering Dictionary

of a small sphere gap. When the probes are byte in most computers, the unit of mem-
touched to each terminal of a good insulator, ory addressing and the smallest quantity di-
the gap will break down and emit a buzzing rectly manipulated by instructions. The term
sound. “byte” is of doubtful origin, but was used
in some early computers to denote any field
BV GD common notation for FET gate-to- within a word (e.g., DEC PDP-10). Since
drain reverse breakdown voltage. its use on the IBM “Stretch” computer (IBM
7030) and especially the IBM System/360 in
BV GS common notation for FET gate-to- the early 1960s, a byte is now generally un-
source reverse breakdown voltage. derstood to be 8 bits, although 7 bits is also
a possibility.
bw common notation for radian bandwith
in radians per second. byte multiplexer channel an I/O chan-
nel that can be assigned to more than one
commonnotationforfractionalarith-
bw a data transfer at a time and can be released
metic mean radian bandwidth in radians per for another device following each byte trans-
second. fer. (In this regard, it resembles a typical
computer bus.) Byte multiplexing is par-
bw g common notation for fractional geo-
ticularly suited to lower speed devices with
metric mean radian bandwidth in radians per
minimal device buffering. (IBM terminol-
second.
ogy) See also selector channel, multiplexer
channel.
BWO See backward wave oscillator.
byte serial a method of data transmission
BX cable a flexible, steel-armored cable
where bits are transmitted in parallel as bytes
used in residential and industrial wiring.
and the bytes are transmitted serially. For ex-
ample, the Centronics-style printer interface
bypass See forwarding.
is byte-serial.
bypass switch a manually-operated
switch used to connect load conductors when
an automatic transfer switch is disconnected.

c
2000 by CRC Press LLC