M

MAC Address(MAC)

A unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment.

network

Machine Translation(MT)

The automated process of translating text or speech from one natural language to another using computer software.

ai

Macro-operation

A high-level instruction from the processor's Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), such as an x86 instruction.

hardware

Mainnet

The primary, live version of a blockchain where actual transactions take place and the native tokens have real economic value.

web

Malware

Any software intentionally designed to cause disruption, leak information, or gain unauthorized access.

security

Managed Detection and Response(MDR)

An outsourced cybersecurity service that provides organizations with threat hunting services and responds to threats once they are discovered.

security

Managed DNS

A cloud-based Domain Name System service that provides high availability and scalability for domain registration and routing.

cloud

Managed Hadoop/Spark

A cloud service that simplifies running big data frameworks like Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark on a managed cluster of instances.

cloud

Managed Identity

A feature that provides cloud services with an automatically managed identity in the cloud's IAM system, eliminating the need for developers to manage credentials.

cloud

Managed Machine Learning Platform

A comprehensive cloud service that provides tools for every stage of the machine learning lifecycle, from data preparation to model deployment.

cloud

Managed Relational Database

A cloud service that automates the setup, operation, and scaling of relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.

cloud

Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP)(MSSP)

A third-party company that provides outsourced monitoring and management of security devices and systems for other organizations.

security

Man-in-the-Middle Attack(MitM)

An attack where the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communications between two parties who believe they are directly communicating with each other.

security

MapReduce

A programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating big data sets with a parallel, distributed algorithm on a cluster.

ai

Markov Chain

A mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another according to certain probabilistic rules, where the next state depends only on the current state.

ai

Markov Chain Monte Carlo(MCMC)

A class of algorithms for sampling from a probability distribution.

ai

Massive MIMO

A wireless network technology that uses a very large number of antennas at the base station to improve spectral efficiency and capacity.

network

Master Data Management(MDM)

A technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets.

ai

Material UI(MUI)

A popular React component library that implements Google's Material Design system.

web

Matplotlib

The foundational plotting library for the Python programming language.

ai

Maximum Likelihood Estimation(MLE)

A method of estimating the parameters of a probability distribution by maximizing a likelihood function.

ai

MD5(MD5)

A widely used cryptographic hash function that produces a 128-bit hash value, now considered cryptographically broken.

security

Mean

The mathematical average of a set of numbers, calculated by dividing the sum of all values by the total number of values.

ai

Mean Absolute Error(MAE)

A regression metric that calculates the average of the absolute differences between predicted and actual values.

ai

Mean Squared Error(MSE)

A loss function used in regression tasks that calculates the average of the squares of the errors between predicted and actual values.

ai

Mean Time Between Failures(MTBF)

The average time a system or component operates between consecutive failures.

dev

Mean Time to Detect(MTTD)

The average time it takes for a team to become aware of an incident after it has occurred.

dev

Mean Time to Repair(MTTR)

The average time it takes to restore a service to its normal operational state after a failure.

dev

Median

The middle value in a list of numbers ordered from lowest to highest.

ai

Media Source Extensions(MSE)

A browser API that allows JavaScript to dynamically generate media streams for playback, enabling features like adaptive bitrate streaming.

web

Memory Barrier

A type of instruction that forces the CPU or compiler to enforce an ordering constraint on memory operations.

hardware

Memory Consistency Model

A set of rules that defines the order in which memory operations (reads and writes) appear to occur to different processors in a multi-core system.

hardware

Memory Management Unit(MMU)

A computer hardware component that handles all memory and caching operations associated with the processor.

hardware

Memory-Mapped I/O(MMIO)

A method of performing I/O where the same address space is used to address both main memory and I/O devices.

hardware

Memory Wall

The growing gap between the speed of the CPU and the speed of the main memory (RAM).

hardware

Mercurial

A free, distributed source control management tool.

dev

Merge (Ethereum)

The historic event in September 2022 when the Ethereum mainnet transitioned from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

web

Merge Request(MR)

The GitLab equivalent of a Pull Request (PR).

dev

Merkle Tree

A mathematical structure used in computer science and blockchain to efficiently summarize and verify the integrity of large sets of data.

web

Mesh Networking

A network topology in which each node relays data for the network, and all mesh nodes cooperate in the distribution of data in the network.

network

Mesh Topology

A network topology where nodes are interconnected, with many nodes having multiple physical or logical paths to other nodes.

network

Message Queue

A form of asynchronous service-to-service communication used in serverless and microservices architectures.

dev

Metadata Management

The administration of data that describes other data.

ai

Metasploit

A widely used penetration testing framework that provides information about security vulnerabilities and aids in exploitation and IDS signature development.

security

Metaverse

A collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space.

web

Metrics Collection

The process of gathering numerical data about the performance and health of a system over time.

dev

Metropolitan Area Network(MAN)

A network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic area larger than a LAN but smaller than a WAN, typically covering a city.

network

MEV(MEV)

The maximum value that can be extracted from block production by reordering transactions.

web

MIB(MIB)

A database used for managing all the entities in a network, typically associated with SNMP.

network

Micro-operation(uOp)

A simple, low-level instruction used internally by a processor to implement complex machine instructions.

hardware

Microservices

An architectural style that structures an application as a collection of small, autonomous services modeled around a business domain.

dev

Microsoft SQL Server

A relational database management system developed by Microsoft.

ai

Milvus

An open-source vector database built for scalable similarity search and AI-powered applications.

ai

MIMD(MIMD)

Multiple Instruction, Multiple Data; a type of parallel computing where multiple processors execute different instructions on different data.

hardware

Minification

The process of removing all unnecessary characters from source code without changing its functionality.

web

Mining

The process by which new blocks are added to a proof-of-work blockchain and new units of cryptocurrency are issued.

web

MIPS Architecture(MIPS)

A reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Computer Systems.

hardware

Missing Value Imputation

The process of replacing missing data with substituted values.

ai

Mistral

A high-performance language model known for its efficiency and the use of Grouped-Query Attention (GQA) and Sliding Window Attention.

ai

MITRE ATT&CK Framework(ATT&CK)

A globally accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations.

security

Mixture of Experts(MoE)

A machine learning technique where different parts of a model are trained to handle different types of inputs.

ai

MLOps(MLOps)

Machine Learning Operations; a set of practices that aims to deploy and maintain machine learning models in production reliably and efficiently.

ai

Mobile-First Design

A design strategy where the mobile version of a website is developed first, and then features are added for larger screens.

web

Mob Programming

A software development approach where the whole team works on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer.

dev

Mocking

A technique in unit testing where real objects are replaced with simulated objects that mimic the behavior of the real ones.

dev

Mode

The value that appears most frequently in a data set.

ai

Model Collapse

A degenerative process where an AI model trained on AI-generated data begins to lose its ability to represent reality accurately, eventually producing nonsensical or repetitive outputs.

ai

Model Registry

A central repository for managing the lifecycle of machine learning models, including versioning, stage tracking, and annotations.

ai

Model Versioning

The practice of tracking and managing different iterations of machine learning models, including their code, parameters, and training data.

ai

Modem

A device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information and demodulates the signal to decode the transmitted information.

network

Momentum

A technique used in optimization algorithms to accelerate gradient descent by taking into account the previous gradients.

ai

MongoDB

A source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program.

ai

Monolithic Architecture

A traditional software development model where the entire application is built as a single, unified unit.

dev

Monte Carlo Simulation

A mathematical technique used to estimate the possible outcomes of an uncertain event.

ai

Moore's Law

The observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years.

hardware

More than Moore(MtM)

A trend in semiconductor development focused on adding value through functional diversification rather than just shrinking transistor size.

hardware

MOSFET(MOSFET)

Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor; the most common type of transistor used in digital and analog circuits.

hardware

Motherboard

The main printed circuit board (PCB) in a computer that holds and allows communication between many of the crucial electronic components.

hardware

Moving Average(MA)

A calculation used to analyze data points by creating a series of averages of different subsets of the full data set.

ai

MQTT(MQTT)

A lightweight, publish-subscribe network protocol that transports messages between devices.

network

MSS(MSS)

The maximum amount of data that a device can receive in a single TCP segment.

network

MSTP(MSTP)

An extension of RSTP that allows multiple VLANs to be mapped to a single spanning tree instance.

network

MTU(MTU)

The maximum size of a packet or frame that can be sent in a single network transaction.

network

Multi-AZ Deployment

A high-availability strategy where a service is deployed across multiple Availability Zones to ensure resilience against data center failures.

cloud

Multicast

A communication method where data is sent from a single source to a specific group of interested recipients simultaneously.

network

Multi-cloud

A strategy where an organization uses cloud computing services from multiple providers.

cloud

Multi-core Processor

A single computing component with two or more independent processing units (cores) that read and execute program instructions.

hardware

Multi-Factor Authentication(MFA)

A security process that requires users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access to a resource.

security

Multi-head Attention

An extension of self-attention that allows the model to jointly attend to information from different representation subspaces at different positions.

ai

Multimodal AI

AI systems capable of processing and relating information from multiple types of data, such as text, images, audio, and video.

ai

Multi-Page Application(MPA)

A traditional web application architecture where every change in data or navigation requires a full page reload from the server.

web

Multi-tenant Architecture

A software architecture where a single instance of an application serves multiple customers (tenants), while keeping their data isolated.

cloud

Multi-threading

The ability of a CPU (or a single core) to provide multiple threads of execution concurrently.

hardware

Multus

A CNI plugin for Kubernetes that enables attaching multiple network interfaces to a single pod.

cloud

Mutation Testing

A type of software testing where the source code is intentionally modified (mutated) to see if the existing tests can detect the changes.

dev

MySQL

An open-source relational database management system.

ai