P

Packet Capture(PCAP)

The process of intercepting and logging traffic as it passes over a digital network.

network

Packet Loss

A condition where one or more data packets traveling across a network fail to reach their destination.

network

Pact

A popular open-source framework for consumer-driven contract testing.

dev

Page Fault

An exception raised by the MMU when a program tries to access a page that is not currently mapped in physical memory.

hardware

PageSpeed Insights(PSI)

A tool that reports on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved.

web

Page Table

A data structure used by a virtual memory system to store the mapping between virtual addresses and physical addresses.

hardware

Paging

A memory management scheme that eliminates the need for contiguous allocation of physical memory.

hardware

Pair Programming

An Agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation.

dev

Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning(PEFT)

A set of techniques for fine-tuning large models by only updating a small number of parameters.

ai

Parcel

A zero-configuration web application bundler that offers a fast and easy-to-use alternative to Webpack.

web

PAT(PAT)

A type of NAT that maps multiple private IP addresses to a single public IP address by using different port numbers.

network

Patch Management

The process of identifying, acquiring, installing, and verifying software updates (patches) to fix vulnerabilities and improve performance.

security

Path MTU Discovery(PMTUD)

A technique used to determine the smallest MTU along a network path to avoid IP fragmentation.

network

PCI DSS(PCI DSS)

A set of security standards designed to ensure that all companies that accept, process, store, or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment.

security

PCIe

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express; a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard.

hardware

Peering

A direct network connection between two Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) that allows them to communicate using private IP addresses.

cloud

Peer-to-Peer Web(P2P Web)

An architectural approach where web content is served directly between users' browsers rather than from a centralized server.

web

Penetration Testing

An authorized simulated cyberattack on a computer system to evaluate its security.

security

Penetration Testing Framework (PTES)(PTES)

A comprehensive standard designed to provide a common language and scope for performing high-quality penetration tests.

security

Pepper (Cryptography)

A secret constant added to a password before hashing, similar to a salt but stored separately from the database.

security

Performance Testing

A type of testing intended to determine how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload.

dev

Peripheral

Any auxiliary device that connects to and works with the computer in some way.

hardware

Permissioned Blockchain

A blockchain where access to the network and the ability to participate in consensus are restricted to authorized users.

web

Permissionless Blockchain

A blockchain that is open to anyone to join, transact, and participate in the consensus process without needing approval from a central authority.

web

Persistent Volume(PV)

A piece of storage in a Kubernetes cluster that has been provisioned by an administrator or dynamically provisioned using Storage Classes.

cloud

Persistent Volume Claim(PVC)

A request for storage by a user in a Kubernetes cluster.

cloud

Personal Area Network(PAN)

A network for interconnecting electronic devices within an individual person's workspace, typically within a range of 10 meters.

network

Phishing

A social engineering attack where an attacker sends a fraudulent message to trick a person into revealing sensitive information.

security

Phishing Simulation

A security exercise where an organization sends mock phishing emails to its employees to test their awareness and response to such attacks.

security

Photolithography

A process used in microfabrication to pattern parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate using light.

hardware

Physical Data Model

A representation of a data design as implemented, or intended to be implemented, in a database management system.

ai

Physical Layer

The first and lowest layer of the OSI model, responsible for the physical connection between devices and the transmission of raw bitstreams.

network

Pie Chart

A circular statistical graphic, which is divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportion.

ai

Pinecone

A popular managed, cloud-native vector database designed for high-performance AI applications and similarity search.

ai

Ping

A basic network utility used to test the reachability of a host and measure the round-trip time for messages.

network

Pipeline (Computing)

A technique where multiple instructions are overlapped in execution, similar to an assembly line.

hardware

Platform as a Product

The mindset of treating an internal developer platform (IDP) as a product that serves internal customers (developers).

dev

Platform as a Service(PaaS)

A cloud model that provides a platform for developing, running, and managing applications without infrastructure complexity.

cloud

Platform Engineering

The discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering organizations in the cloud-native era.

dev

Play-to-Earn(P2E)

A business model for games that allows players to earn rewards with real-world value, typically in the form of cryptocurrencies or NFTs.

web

Plotly

A graphing library that makes interactive, publication-quality graphs online.

ai

PNPM

A fast, disk space efficient package manager that uses a unique content-addressable storage system.

web

Pod

The smallest and simplest unit in the Kubernetes object model that you create or deploy.

cloud

Policy as Code(PaC)

The practice of managing and enforcing policies (security, compliance, operational) using code and automated tools.

dev

Polkadot(DOT)

A multi-chain protocol that enables different blockchains to interoperate securely.

web

Polling (I/O)

A technique where the CPU repeatedly checks the status of a device to see if it is ready for an I/O operation.

hardware

Polyfill

A piece of code (usually JavaScript on the Web) used to provide modern functionality on older browsers that do not natively support it.

web

Polygon(POL)

A Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that provides a framework for building Ethereum-compatible networks.

web

Port Number

A 16-bit number used to identify a specific process or service on a device in a network.

network

Port Security

A Layer 2 security feature that restricts access to a switch port based on the MAC addresses of connected devices.

network

Portworx

A commercial cloud-native storage and data management platform for Kubernetes.

cloud

Positional Encoding

A technique used in Transformers to provide the model with information about the relative or absolute position of tokens in a sequence.

ai

PostCSS

A tool for transforming CSS with JavaScript plugins, allowing for advanced features like auto-prefixing and future CSS syntax.

web

PostgreSQL

A free and open-source relational database management system emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance.

ai

Post-incident Review(PIR)

A meeting and document that summarizes the details of an incident, its impact, the response, and the lessons learned.

dev

Power BI

A business analytics service by Microsoft that provides interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities.

ai

Power Gating

A power-saving technique that completely shuts off the current to blocks of a circuit that are not in use.

hardware

PowerPC

A RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance.

hardware

Power Supply Unit(PSU)

The hardware component that converts high-voltage AC from the wall outlet to low-voltage DC power for the internal components of a computer.

hardware

Power Wall

The limit on processor performance imposed by the inability to dissipate the heat generated by increasing clock speeds and transistor density.

hardware

PPO(PPO)

Proximal Policy Optimization; a popular reinforcement learning algorithm used to train AI agents, including the alignment of LLMs.

ai

Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance(pBFT)

An algorithm designed to settle transactions efficiently in a distributed system even when some nodes are unreliable.

web

Preact

A fast 3kB alternative to React with the same modern API, designed for performance and small bundle sizes.

web

Precision

A metric that measures the accuracy of a model's positive predictions; the ratio of true positives to the total number of positive predictions.

ai

Precision-Recall Curve(PR Curve)

A graph showing the tradeoff between precision and recall for different thresholds, particularly useful for highly imbalanced datasets.

ai

Pre-commit Hooks

A specific type of Git hook that runs before a commit is finalized, often used to check for code quality and security issues.

dev

Preemptible Instances

Low-cost virtual machine instances that can be terminated by the cloud provider at any time if the capacity is needed elsewhere.

cloud

Prefetching

A technique that tells the browser to download resources that the user might need in the near future.

web

Preloading

A technique that tells the browser to download a resource as soon as possible because it is critical for the current page.

web

Presentation Layer

The sixth layer of the OSI model, responsible for data translation, encryption, and compression.

network

Principal Component Analysis(PCA)

A dimensionality reduction technique that transforms a large set of variables into a smaller one that still contains most of the information in the original set.

ai

Principle of Least Privilege(PoLP)

The practice of limiting access rights for users to the bare minimum permissions they need.

security

Private Blockchain

A blockchain that is operated by a single organization which controls who can view the ledger and participate in the network.

web

Private Cloud

Cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single organization.

cloud

Privileged Access Management(PAM)

A sub-discipline of identity security that focuses on managing and auditing the accounts of users with elevated permissions.

security

Privilege Escalation

The act of exploiting a bug, design flaw, or configuration error in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected.

security

Problem Management

The process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems that happen or could happen in an IT service.

dev

Progressive Delivery

An evolution of Continuous Delivery that uses fine-grained control over traffic to release features gradually and safely.

dev

Progressive Web App(PWA)

A type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

cloud

Prometheus

An open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability in cloud-native environments.

cloud

Prompt Engineering

The process of refining and optimizing inputs (prompts) to guide Large Language Models toward generating more accurate and relevant outputs.

ai

Prompt Injection

A security vulnerability where an attacker provides specially crafted input to an LLM to override its original instructions and perform unauthorized actions.

ai

Proof of Attendance Protocol(POAP)

A system that issues digital badges in the form of NFTs to prove that a person attended a specific event.

web

Proof of Authority(PoA)

A consensus mechanism that uses identity and reputation as a stake, rather than computational power or wealth.

web

Proof of History(PoH)

A technique used to create a historical record that proves an event occurred at a specific moment in time, used primarily by the Solana blockchain.

web

Prophet (Forecasting)

An open-source forecasting tool developed by Meta (Facebook) designed for analyzing time series data with strong seasonal effects.

ai

Protobuf

Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data.

dev

Proto-Danksharding

An intermediate step toward full sharding (EIP-4844) that introduces 'blobs' to reduce Layer 2 transaction costs.

web

Proximity API

A browser API that provides information about the distance of a physical object from the device's proximity sensor.

web

Pruning

A model compression technique that involves removing unnecessary neurons or connections from a trained neural network to make it smaller and faster.

ai

Pseudonymization

A data management and de-identification procedure by which personally identifiable information fields within a data record are replaced by one or more artificial identifiers.

security

Public Blockchain

A blockchain that is both permissionless and transparent, allowing anyone to view the ledger and participate in the network.

web

Public Cloud

Cloud services offered by third-party providers over the public internet.

cloud

Public Key Infrastructure(PKI)

A framework of roles, policies, hardware, software, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke digital certificates.

security

Pub/Sub

A messaging pattern where senders (publishers) do not program the messages to be sent directly to specific receivers (subscribers).

dev

Pub/Sub Service

A messaging pattern where publishers send messages to a topic, and multiple subscribers receive those messages asynchronously.

cloud

Pull Request(PR)

A method of submitting contributions to an open-source project or a shared repository, allowing for code review before merging.

dev

Pulumi

An infrastructure as code platform that allows developers to use familiar programming languages to define and deploy cloud infrastructure.

cloud

Purple Teaming

A collaborative security methodology where Red and Blue teams work together to improve an organization's security posture.

security

Push API

A browser API that allows web applications to receive messages pushed to them from a server, even when the application is not active.

web

P-value

The probability of obtaining results at least as extreme as the observed results, assuming the null hypothesis is true.

ai

PWA Manifest

A JSON file that provides information about a web application in a format that allows it to be installed on a user's device like a native app.

web

Python for Networking

The use of the Python programming language to automate network tasks, interact with APIs, and build custom networking tools.

network