latency

[ leyt-n-see ]

noun

, plural la·ten·cies.

1. the state of being latent.
2. latent period.
3. Computers. the period of delay when one component of a hardware system is waiting for an action to be executed by another component.
4. Digital Technology. the time required online or in a network for the one-way or round-trip transfer of data between two nodes.
5. Digital Technology. (in virtual reality and other types of simulation) the discrepancy between the time delay of stimulus and response in the simulation as compared to the real-world equivalent.

Word History and Origins

Origin of latency¹

First recorded in 1630–40; lat(ent) + -ency

Example Sentences

The devices showed very low latency -- that is, their reaction time was close to human reflexive movement.

From Science Daily

"We were excited to see preliminary evidence that our HLP cure therapy reverses latency irrespective of the subtype of the individual's infection. Whilst this needs to be explored further, it hints at the global applicability of our approach."

From Science Daily

"In this work, we propose and demonstrate a new circuit architecture and programming protocol that can efficiently represent high-precision numbers using a weighted sum of multiple, relatively low-precision analog devices, such as memristors, with a greatly reduced overhead in circuitry, energy and latency compared with existing quantization approaches," says Xia.

From Science Daily

"This latency allows them to be overlooked, contributing to their eventual emergence as a serious invasive threat. They're like invasive time bombs."

From Science Daily

LN microwave photonics, enabling microwave photonics chips with compact sizes, high signal fidelity, and low latency; it also represents a chip-scale analog electronic processing and computing engine.

From Science Daily