In telecommunications and computing, a data stream is a sequence of digitally encoded coherent signals (packets of data or data packets) used to transmit or receive information that is in the process of being transmitted.
In electronics and computer architecture, a data flow determines for which time which data item is scheduled to enter or leave which port of a systolic array, a Reconfigurable Data Path Array or similar pipe network, or other processing unit or block (cf. main article).
Often the data stream is seen as the counterpart of an instruction stream, since the von Neumann machine is instruction-stream-driven, whereas its counterpart, the Anti machine, is data stream driven.
The term "data stream" has many more meanings, such as by the definition from the context of systolic arrays.
Read more about Data Stream: Formal Definition
Famous quotes containing the words data and/or stream:
“This city is neither a jungle nor the moon.... In long shot: a cosmic smudge, a conglomerate of bleeding energies. Close up, it is a fairly legible printed circuit, a transistorized labyrinth of beastly tracks, a data bank for asthmatic voice-prints.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice.... It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days’ duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)