industrial robot

An industrial robot is formally distinct by ISO as an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multi-use manipulator programmable in three or more axes. The field of robotics may be more almost defined as the study, design and use of robot systems for manufacturing (a top-level definition relying on the prior definition of robot).

Metal

In chemistry, a metal is a ingredient that readily loses electrons to form positive ions and has metallic bonds between metal atoms. Metals form ionic bonds with non-metals. They are sometimes described as a web of positive ions surrounded by a cloud of delocalized electrons. The metals are one of the three groups of elements as eminent by their ionization and bonding properties, along with the metalloids and nonmetals. On the periodic table, a diagonal line drawn from boron separates the metals from the nonmetals. Most elements on this line are metalloids, sometimes called semi-metals; elements to the lower left are metals; elements to the upper right are nonmetals.

Clock synchronization

Clock synchronization is a problem from computer science and engineering which deals with the idea that internal clocks of several computers may be different. Even when initially set accurately, real clocks will differ after some amount of time due to clock drift, caused by clocks counting time at slightly different rates. There are several problems that occur as a consequence of rate differences and several solutions, some being more appropriate than others in certain contexts.

Accumulator

In a computer CPU, an accumulator is a register in which intermediary arithmetic and logic results are stored. Without a register like an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation (addition, multiplication, shift, etc.) to main memory, possibly only to be read right back again for use in the next operation. Access to main memory is slower than access to a register like the accumulator because the technology used for the huge main memory is slower (but cheaper) than that used for a register.

The canonical example for accumulator use is adding a list of numbers. The accumulator is initially set to zero, then each number in spin is added to the value in the accumulator. Only when all numbers have been added is the result seized in the accumulator written to main memory or to another, non-accumulator, CPU register.