Glossary – Sun Microsystems VIRTUALBOX 3.0.0 User Manual
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Glossary
A
ACPI
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, an industry specification for BIOS
and hardware extensions to configure PC hardware and perform power manage-
ment. Windows 2000 and higher as well as Linux 2.4 and higher support ACPI.
Windows can only enable or disable ACPI support at installation time.
AHCI
Advanced Host Controller Interface, the interface that supports SATA devices
such as hard disks. See chapter
Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI),
, page
AMD-V
The hardware virtualization features built into modern AMD processors. See
chapter
Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V)
, page
API
Application Programming Interface.
APIC
Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller, a newer version of the original
PC PIC (programmable interrupt controller). Most modern CPUs contain an on-
chip APIC (“local APIC”). Many systems also contain an I/O APIC (input output
APIC) as a separate chip which provides more than 16 IRQs. Windows 2000
and higher use a different kernel if they detect an I/O APIC during installation.
Therefore an I/O APIC must not be removed after installation.
ATA
Advanced Technology Attachment, an industry standard for hard disk inter-
faces (synonymous with IDE). See chapter
Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA
, page
B
BIOS
Basic Input/Output System, the firmware built into most personal computers
which is responsible of initializing the hardware after the computer has been
turned on and then booting an operating system. VirtualBox ships with its own
virtual BIOS that runs when a virtual machine is started.
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