The decibel is a logarithmic unit that expresses the ratio of two power or amplitude values, used in acoustics and audio to…
Declarative configuration describes the desired end state of cloud infrastructure and lets a tool work out the steps needed to reach and…
A dedicated server is a physical machine rented or owned by a single customer, whose CPU, memory, storage and network are not…
Deduplication in data processing identifies and removes or merges records that describe the same entity or event, so each appears only once.
Deep learning is the branch of machine learning that trains many-layered neural networks to learn features directly from raw data like text,…
A default gateway is the router address a host sends packets to whenever the destination lies outside its own subnet and no…
A default password is the factory-set credential a connected device ships with, a leading cause of hijacked cameras, routers and hubs in…
Defense in depth is the cybersecurity strategy of layering independent controls so that one failed safeguard does not expose the protected asset.
DeFi, or decentralized finance, is the set of financial services such as trading, lending and borrowing run by smart contracts on public…
Degrees of freedom (DoF) in robotic manipulation count the independent joint motions that define a robot arm's configuration and the poses it…
Delay is an audio effect that records a signal and plays it back after a set time, creating echoes, doubling, rhythmic repeats…
A delayed job is a unit of background work placed in a queue with a future execution time, so a worker runs…
Demosaicing is the image processing step that rebuilds full RGB color for every pixel from the single-color samples of a color filter…
Demuxing is the process of separating the video, audio and subtitle streams stored in a container such as MP4 or MKV into…
Dependency injection is a software architecture technique in which a component receives its collaborators from outside instead of creating them itself.
A Deployment is the Kubernetes object that declares how many Pod replicas of an application should run and rolls out new versions…
Deprecation marks a software feature, API or version as discouraged and scheduled for removal, giving users a warning period to migrate before…
A depth camera is a robotics sensor that measures the distance to every pixel in its view, producing a depth image a…
Depth of field is the distance range in front of and behind the focus point that looks acceptably sharp in a photograph,…
Descriptive analytics summarizes historical data into counts, totals, rates and trends that show what happened in a business or process over a…
A design pattern in programming is a named, reusable solution to a recurring software design problem, described with its context, structure and…
Design QA is the design workflow step in which designers review built interfaces against the approved design and log visual or interaction…
A design system in UI design is a governed set of tokens, components, patterns and guidelines that keeps product interfaces consistent at…
Design tokens are named, platform-neutral values for color, spacing, type and motion that keep design files and product code synchronized in one…
A desktop application is a program installed and run locally on a personal computer operating system, using its windows, files and hardware…
A desktop environment is the integrated set of software that gives an operating system its graphical interface, including panels, windows, settings and…
Developer handoff in the design workflow is the transfer of finished designs, specifications and assets to engineers so they can build them…
A device driver is the operating system component that translates generic kernel requests into the specific commands a piece of hardware understands.
Device fingerprinting is a tracking technique that identifies a browser or device by combining many configuration attributes instead of storing a cookie.
Device pairing is the process that securely links a new smart home device to a hub, app or network by exchanging identity…
DevOps is a culture and set of practices that unites software development and IT operations to deliver changes quickly, safely and continuously…
A DEX, or decentralized exchange, is a DeFi protocol that lets users swap crypto tokens through smart contracts without handing custody to…
DHCP, the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automatically leases IP addresses, subnet masks, gateways and DNS servers to devices joining a network.
A DHCP reservation binds a fixed IP address to one client identifier, so the DHCP server always hands that device the same…
Diagnostic analytics is the stage of data analytics that explains why a metric changed, using drill-down, segmentation and correlation analysis.
A differential backup copies all data changed since the last full backup, so a server restore needs only that full backup plus…
Differential privacy is a mathematical guarantee that limits how much any single person's data can change the published output of an analysis…
Diffraction in photography is the spreading of light as it passes the lens aperture, which softens fine detail as the lens is…
A diffuser in photography lighting is a translucent material that scatters light and enlarges the source, producing softer shadows and gentler highlights.
A diffusion model is a generative AI model that creates images, audio or video by learning to reverse a gradual noising process…
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is software for recording, editing, mixing and producing digital audio and MIDI on a computer in one…
Digital forensics is the disciplined collection, preservation and analysis of digital evidence to reconstruct what happened during a security incident.
A digital signature is a cryptographic value that proves who signed a message and that the content has not changed since it…
A digital twin in robotics is a virtual model of a real robot or cell, kept in sync with live data to…
Disaster recovery (DR) is the planned process of restoring servers, data and services after a major outage within defined RTO and RPO…
Disk I/O is the reading and writing of data between a server and its storage, measured in IOPS, throughput and latency, and…
Disk Management is the built-in Windows console for initializing disks and creating, formatting, resizing and lettering partitions and volumes.
A display server is the software layer that owns the screen and input devices and lets graphical applications draw windows and receive…
DisplayPort is a VESA digital display interface that carries high-resolution video and audio from computers to monitors over packet-based lanes.
Distillation is a training method in which a smaller student model learns to reproduce the outputs of a larger teacher model at…