Vertex Buffer Object (VBO)
An OpenGL buffer that stores vertex data in the graphics card's memory so it need not be shipped across from the processor every frame.
A VBO holds the vertices' attributes — positions, normals, texture coordinates — in GPU memory. Before it, geometry was sent across the bus one call at a time every frame (immediate mode), which ate bandwidth. With a VBO the data is uploaded once and drawn from there over and over. It is usually paired with an index buffer, which reuses shared vertices, and a vertex array object (VAO), which describes the memory layout.
Introduced in OpenGL 1.5 (2003) via the ARB_vertex_buffer_object extension. The Direct3D equivalent is simply called a vertex buffer. The vertex shader reads its inputs from exactly here.