Acronym for "Advanced Encryption Standard." Use this tag for questions about implementations of AES. Questions about the algorithm and theory of AES would be more appropriate on Cryptography Stack Exchange.
This tag should only be used for questions about hardware and software implementations of the algorithm. Questions about the algorithm and underlying theories would be more appropriate on Cryptography Stack Exchange.
The Advanced Encryption Standard is a specification for digital encryption approved by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST in 2001. It operates on 128-bit blocks of plaintext to produce 128-bit blocks of cyphertext, using a 128-, 192-, or 256-bit key.
AES is also known as Rijndael's Algorithm, even though it is actually a subset of a larger family of Rijndael encryption algorithms that use varying block sizes for the plaintext, cyphertext, and keys.
Useful Links:
Wikipedia: Advanced Encryption Standard
Wikipedia: Rijndael Key Schedule
Sam Trenholm's Blog, AES Series