vi - technical definition

(1) (Visual Interface) A Unix full-screen text editor that can be run from a terminal or the system console. It is a fast, programmer-oriented utility.

(2) (VI) (Virtual Interface) A memory to memory transport protocol that is used for high-speed transfer of data between machines. Used in clusters of two or more computers, VI enables long blocks of data to be sent from one application in one machine directly to another application in a remote machine without the overhead associated with being broken up into packets by a transport protocol. However, the lower data link protocols VI relies on to transmit over a network may or may not break up the data into frames. Another feature is VI's ability to communicate directly from the application's buffer to the network interface and bypass the operating system. Also known as Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA), VI is a type of a "remote DMA." See RDMA, DMA and DAFS.