Latency

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Latency \La"ten*cy\, n. [See {Latent}.]
     1. The state or quality of being latent.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              To simplify the discussion, I shall distinguish
              three degrees of this latency.        --Sir W.


                                                    Hamilton.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. The time between a stimulus the appearance of the
        response; the time between any causal action and the first
        appearance of the effect. Called also {latent period}.
        [PJC]
  
     3. Hence: (Med.) The time between exposure to a carcinogen or
        other disease-causing agent and the appearance of the
        consequent disease.
        [PJC]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  latency
       n 1: (computer science) the time it takes for a specific block of
            data on a data track to rotate around to the read/write
            head [syn: {rotational latency}]
       2: the time that elapses between a stimulus and the response to
          it [syn: {reaction time}, {response time}, {latent period}]
       3: the state of being not yet evident or active

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  37 Moby Thesaurus words for "latency":
     abeyance, apathy, catalepsy, catatonia, cold storage, deadliness,
     deathliness, delitescence, doldrums, dormancy, entropy,
     indifference, indolence, inertia, inertness, intermission,
     interruption, languor, latent content, latent meaningfulness,
     latentness, lotus-eating, passiveness, passivity, possibility,
     potentiality, quiescence, quiescency, stagnancy, stagnation,
     stasis, suspense, suspension, torpor, vegetation, virtuality,
     vis inertiae
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  latency
       
           1. The time it takes for a {packet} to cross
          a network connection, from sender to receiver.
       
          2. The period of time that a frame is held by a network device
          before it is forwarded.
       
          Two of the most important parameters of a communications
          channel are its latency, which should be low, and its
          {bandwidth}, which should be high.  Latency is particularly
          important for a {synchronous} {protocol} where each packet
          must be acknowledged before the next can be transmitted.
       
          (2000-02-27)