Dell Serial Attached SCSI Host Bus Adapter 5i Integrated and 5E Adapter - Manual (Page 53)

Glossary
51
Glossary
This section defines or identifies technical terms,
abbreviations, and acronyms used in this document.
A
Adapter
An adapter enables the computer system to access
peripheral devices by converting the protocol of one
bus or interface to another. An adapter may also
provide specialized function. Adapters may reside
on the system board or be an add-in card. Other
examples of adapters include network and
SCSI adapters.
B
BIOS
(Basic Input/Output System) The part of the operating
system in a system that provides the lowest level
interface to peripheral devices. BIOS also refers to the
Basic Input/Input Output System of other
“intelligent” devices, such as RAID controllers.
BIOS Configuration Utility
The BIOS Configuration Utility configures and
maintains user configurable adapter parameters. The
utility resides in the adapter BIOS and its operation is
independent of the operating systems on your system.
The BIOS Configuration Utility, also known as Ctrl-C,
is built on elements called controls. Each control
performs a function.
Bus
Bus consists of electrical pathways, which move
information between basic components of the
computer. A computer's bus can be divided into two
different types, Internal and External.
The Internal Bus connects the different components
inside the case: The CPU, system memory, and all
other components on the motherboard. It's also
referred to as the System Bus.
The External Bus connects the different external
devices, peripherals, expansion slots, I/O ports and
drive connections to the rest of the computer. It is
generally slower than the system bus. Another name
for the External Bus, is the Expansion Bus.
D
Disk
A non-volatile, randomly addressable, rewriteable
mass storage device, including both rotating magnetic
and optical storage devices and solid-state storage
devices, or non-volatile electronic storage elements.
DKMS
DKMS stands for Dynamic Kernel Module Support.
It is designed to create a framework where kernel
dependent module source can reside so that it is very
easy to rebuild modules as you upgrade kernels. This
will allow Linux vendors to provide driver drops
without having to wait for new kernel releases while
also taking out the guesswork for customers
attempting to recompile modules for new kernels.
KD534bk1.book Page 51 Monday, April 2, 2007 4:37 PM