Glossary – Texas Instruments 4000M User Manual

Page 277

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bits per second — The speed at which your computer
receives or sends data to a device such as a modem or
serial printer.

boot — To start your computer; also called start-up and
power-up.

bps — See bits per second.

brightness control — A control that allows you to adjust the
brightness of the display.

buffer — A portion of the computer’s memory that
temporarily holds information used by a program; for
example, the portion of a document you are working on
while using a word processor.

bug — An error in the hardware or software of your
computer that causes an operation to perform incorrectly.

byte — A grouping of eight binary digits (bits) that your
computer treats as one unit; usually represents one character.

cache — A software device that accumulates copies of
recently used disk sectors in

RAM.

The application program

can then read these copies without accessing the disk,
thereby increasing performance.

central processing unit (

CPU

) — The electronic circuits in

your computer where most processing of information takes
place.

Glossary

Glossary 3

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