[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S 4] serendipityguy:
[Staying Current] Reference Terms[ added 061513

[Staying Current] Reference Terms by faux123 & N00B_IN_N33D added to the This Reference Library Section added 061513

ADB

The Android Debug Bridge. A collection of tools that any rooted Android user should have. ADB allows one to interact with their device from a terminal interface. This enables the user to do a variety of tasks such as sideloading applications and more.

Android

A Linux based operating system created and mostly designed by Google. The major revisions are 1.0, 1.1, 1.5 (Cupcake), 1.6 (Donut), 2.0/2.0.1/2.1 (Eclair), 2.2 (Froyo), 2.3 (Gingerbread), 3.0 (Honeycomb - tablet only), 4.0/4.0.1/4.0.2/4.0.3/4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and 4.1 (Jellybean). The majority of Android major revisions are named after desserts.

APK

Android PacKage. These are, basically, Android applications and all of their data. They are run via the Dalvik Virtual Machine on your device.

Bootloader

The part of a computer that loads the operating system.

Brain F*ck Scheduler - (BFS)

This scheduler is designed to be simple and speedy tailor specifically for user interface type systems such as desktop/smart phone devices where user interaction is MORE important than serving 1 million web requests (CFS, the default scheduler) at the same time (think of nimble desktop workstations vs large corporate servers).

CleanCache/FrontSwap (via ZCache backend)

Cleancache provides a place where the kernel can put pages which it can afford to lose, but which it would like to keep around if possible. A classic example is file-backed pages which are clean, so they can be recovered from disk if need be. The kernel can drop such pages with no data loss, but things will get slower if the page is needed in the near future and must be read back from disk. Like Cleancache, Frontswap can play tricks with the stored pages to stretch its memory resources. The real purpose behind this mechanism, though, appears to be to enable a hypervisor to respond quickly to memory usage spikes in virtualized guests. Dan put it this way:

Frontswap serves nicely as an emergency safety valve when a guest has given up (too) much of its memory via ballooning but unexpectedly has an urgent need that can't be serviced quickly enough by the balloon driver.

ClockworkMod

A tool that allows you to flash the phone with different ROMs from the phone (without using a PC). This is handy for developers or those who like to play around with different modified ROMs.

Fair Budget Queue (BFQ I/O scheduler)

This I/O scheduler is an improvement on top of Completely Fair Queue (CFQ). CFQ is fair in terms of time but not in terms of throughput / bandwidth, so BFQ make sure that both time and throughput / bandwidth are balanced across all requests.

Fast No Hz RCU (Optimized for SMP operations)

Fast NoHz is an optimized version of the traditional Tree RCU. Many new kernels are using the Tickless NoHz design. This RCU is tailored and designed to work with the new NoHz kernel system.

Flashing

The act of installing a ROM, Kernel, or other Mod (usually contained in a .zip folder) onto an embedded device or emulator.

Joe's RCU (Optimized for Small SMP systems)

Joe Korty has created an RCU for small SMP systems (> 32 cores). His approach is to isolate all the Garbage Collection (GC, a slow time consuming but necessary processing) to a single core, thus allowing other cores to ONLY work on real required processing. This will allow the additional cores to complete their assigned tasks as fast as possible (not bogged down by GC) then immediately go back to a suspended state (saving battery).

Heimdall

alternative to Odin & for "Mac's

Interactive Governor (Performance)

This governor is designed to put more priority to User Interface (UI aka Apps) tasks, therefore appears more responsive then the traditional OnDemand governor. So if you want the smoothest UI interaction, this governor is for you...

Odin

Odin is a Windows program that allows users to push ROMs, radios, and more onto their device from the comfort of their PC.

Overclocking

Increasing the "clock" of a processor to increase its speed at the expense of battery life and possibly your phone. Not all processors overclock the same, even if the hardware is identical. One phone with a Hummingbird SoC will not be able to overclock to 1.2ghz, yet another would be able to overclock to 1.7ghz (not very likely)

Radio/Modem

The parts of a firmware that allow communication between the operating system, the telecommunication hardware, and a mobile network. Some radios give good battery life, some good signal, some neither.

Rooting

A device hack that provides users with unrestricted access to the entire file system of their mobile devices.

Sideloading

To install applications without using the official Android Market.

SLQB - (SLAB allocator with Queue)

This memory allocator is designed for small number of CPUs system (such as desktop or smart phone devices). This allocator is design to be simple and it is optimized for using order-0 pages as much as possible (order-0 pages are the simplest therefore quickest type of memory in a Linux system to allocate). Not all kernels are using SLQB including CM7 main line...

SmartAssV2 Governor (Balanced)

This governor has a built-in "profile" similar to SetCPU, so screen off will use lower clock rate thus conserve more battery, but it also has a fast wake up feature so that user interaction will not see the lag when switching from Sleep to Wake state.... (So SetCPU Profiles are sorta redundant when using this governor, you can still use SetCPU to OC to higher than default Clock frequency).

XDA

his site; XDA Developers was founded for developers by developers. It is now a valuable resource for people who want to make the most of their mobile devices, from customizing the look and feel to adding new functionality.

ZRAM (aka CompCache aka RAMZSwap)

ZRAM is an updated version formally known as CompCache and RAMZSwap. It was originally designed for 2.6.38.xx kernels, I have backported to our 2.6.35.xx kernel. ZRAM allows real-time compression of memory objects in RAM thus reducing memory pressure for the Linux kernel and can keep more apps in memory longer (more apps in RAM == better performance, less fetching from slower MMC or SDCard). Compression, however, is not Free. Some CPU cycles are required to do the compress/decompression, so there's a slight penalty for it. The original CompCache / RAMZSwap required a user space binary to control its behavior which adds additional penalty to performance, but the new version ZRAM eliminated the need for a separate dedicated daemon, thus reducing the overhead and increased performance from the old CompCache by 20%. Therefore, with the newer implementation of ZRAM interface, the performance penalty is almost negligible.