Physical Architecture (glossary)

(1) A physical architecture is an arrangement of physical elements (system elements and physical interfaces) which provides the design solution for a product, service, or enterprise, and is intended to satisfy logical architecture elements and system requirements. It is implementable through technologies.

(2) An arrangement of physical elements which provides the design solution for a consumer product or life-cycle process intended to satisfy the requirements of the functional architecture and the requirement baseline. (ISO/IEC. 2007)

Source

(1) adapted from ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748 - 4.

(2) ISO/IEC. 2007. Systems and Software Engineering -- Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems. Geneva, Switzerland: International Organization for Standards (ISO)/International Electronical Commission (IEC), ISO/IEC FDIS 42010:2007.

Discussion

Within the terms and definitions related to System Architecture, the present SEBoK tries to fit the real practices and to provide some consistency between those terms.

Definition (1) comes from the terms "design architecture" provided in ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748 - 4; it is adapted here to make consistency with current terminology, in particular with logical architecture .

Definition (2) comes from ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2007 that is replaced by version 2011 in which this definition has been withdrawn.