hot spot

hot spot

1. an area of potential violence or political unrest

2. 

a. any local area of high temperature in a part of an engine, etc.

b. part of the inlet manifold of a paraffin engine that is heated by exhaust gases to vaporize the fuel

3. Computing a company that provides wireless access to the internet for users of portable computers or the places from which the internet can be accessed in this manner

4. Med

a. a small area on the surface of or within a body with an exceptionally high concentration of radioactivity or of some chemical or mineral considered harmful

b. a similar area that generates an abnormal amount of heat, as revealed by thermography

5. Genetics a part of a chromosome that has a tendency for mutation or recombination

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

hot spot

See radio-source structure.

Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006

hot spot

[′hät ‚spät]

(chemical engineering)

An area or point within a reaction system at which the temperature is appreciably higher than in the bulk of the reactor; usually locates the reaction front.

(computer science)

A word in a multiprocessor memory that several processors attempt to access simultaneously, creating a conflict or bottleneck.

(engineering)

An area in a pipeline that is subject to excessive corrosion.

(forestry)

A forest region where fires occur at frequent intervals.

(graphic arts)

A region of excessive illumination on a photo.

(cell and molecular biology)

A site in a gene at which there is an unusually high frequency of mutation.

(nucleonics)

A surface area of higher than average radioactivity.

A part of a reactor fuel surface element that has become overheated.

(physics)

A localized region with temperature higher than the surroundings.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

hot spot

(1)

(primarily used by C/Unix programmers, but spreading) It is received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code eats 90% of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise. Such spikes are called "hot spots" and are good candidates for heavy optimisation or hand-hacking. The term is especially used of tight loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as opposed to (say) initial set-up costs or large but infrequent I/O operations.

See tune, bum, hand-hacking.

hot spot

(2)

The active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the mouse's hot spot on the "ON" widget and click the left button."

hot spot

(3)

A screen region that is sensitive to mouse clicks, which trigger some action. Hypertext help screens are an example, in which a hot spot exists in the vicinity of any word for which additional material is available.

hot spot

(4)

In a massively parallel computer with shared memory, the one location that all 10,000 processors are trying to read or write at once (perhaps because they are all doing a busy-wait on the same lock).

hot spot

(5)

More generally, any place in a hardware design that turns into a performance bottleneck due to resource contention.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

hotspot

(1) The range of a wireless (Wi-Fi) network. See Wi-Fi hotspot.

(2) The part of a graphic on a Web page that serves as a link to a website, another page or file. When the hotspot area is clicked or tapped, the link is executed or an explanation is displayed. The more the hotspot occupies the entire image area, the easier it is to select. However, very often, the hotspot is only a small area within the image. See hypergraphic and image map.

The Hotspot Location

The hotspot comprises the actual pixels that the cursor makes contact with on the graphic. In this example, the hotspot does not occupy the entire image area, but when the cursor moves into the hotspot, the arrow switches to a hand.

(3) A network node that is processing at its maximum or is backlogged due to an excessive number of transactions.

(4) The instructions in a program that are executed more than all the other instructions. To improve performance, the hotspots are the routines that should be refined. A Java compiler aptly named Hotspot optimizes the parts of the program that are executed most frequently.

(5) (hot spot) An area with excessive heat in the datacenter. Hot spots are typically found near server racks that are not cooled properly. Contrast with "cold spot," which is an area that is too cool, often because it is near air conditioning vents.

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