Terminology

2205 terms, tools, patterns and metrics an architect is expected to use precisely. Each one gets a short explanation of what it is, and — where it matters — what it is commonly confused with. Search filters as you type; the column headers sort.

All areas2205 Architecture Fundamentals77 Distributed Systems107 Data Architecture110 Cloud Architecture94 Networking88 API & Integration Architecture82 Reliability & Resilience75 Observability70 Performance & Capacity Engineering72 Security Architecture86 Cost Architecture & FinOps71 Business Architecture67 Architecture Communication67 Enterprise Architecture66 Legacy Modernization71 AI-Era Architecture69 Software Architecture & Engineering71 Architecture Patterns71 Architecture Decision-Making63 The Architect's Meta-Skills61 Delivery & Release Engineering66 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience70 Testing & Quality Architecture66 Data Platform Architecture64 Streaming & Real-Time Data69 Data Governance & Semantics69 Frontend & Experience Architecture66 Edge, Mobile & IoT68 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture65 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk64

Kind Any concept794 practice734 pattern368 metric125 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

3 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Context Window Budget	concept	LLM Application Architecture	The finite token allowance per request, treated as an engineering resource to be allocated deliberately between system instructions, retrieved context, history and output.
Inference Request Path	concept	LLM Application Architecture	The sequence of stages an LLM application request passes through, each with distinct latency, cost and failure characteristics.
KV Cache Attention Cache, Key-Value Cache, Prefix Cache	concept	LLM Application Architecture	The per-session key and value tensors a transformer must hold in GPU memory to generate each subsequent token - the resource that limits concurrent sessions, and whose reuse across turns is the difference betw…