SIG /sig/ N.
(also Common As A Prefix In Combining Forms)
A Special Interest Group, In One Of Several Technical Areas,
Sponsored By The Association For Computing Machinery
(also common as a prefix in combining forms)
A Special Interest Group, in one of several technical areas,
sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery; well-known
ones include SIGPLAN (the Special Interest Group on Programming
Languages), SIGARCH (the Special Interest Group for Computer
Architecture) and SIGGRAPH (the Special Interest Group for Computer
Graphics). Hackers, not surprisingly, like to overextend this
naming convention to less formal associations like SIGBEER (at ACM
conferences) and SIGFOOD (at University of Illinois).
cycle of reincarnation: [coined by Ivan Sutherland ca. 1970] n.
Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a
computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose
peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward
more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices that
it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the
architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU, at
which point the cycle begins again....