Dell PowerEdge 1400, User Manual

Page: 108 / 116

14 User’s Guide
can usually identify a serial port on your
computer by its 9-pin connector.
(
Acronym for single instruction, multiple
data.
<
A computer's system and video BIOS
code is usually stored on ROM chips.
Shadowing refers to the performance-
enhancement technique that copies BIOS
code to faster RAM chips in the upper
memory area (above 640 KB) during the
boot routine.
('"
Acronym for Self-Monitoring Analysis and
Reporting Technology. A technology that
allows hard-disk drives to report errors
and failures to the system BIOS, which
then displays an error message on the
screen. To take advantage of this technol-
ogy, you must have a SMART-compliant
hard-disk drive and the proper support in
the system BIOS.
(
Abbreviation for system management
bus.
(
Abbreviation for symmetric
multiprocessing.
(
Abbreviation for Simple Network Man-
agement Protocol.
In composite drivers with two or more
physical drives, the drive array subsystem
uses a method of data storage called strip-
ing. With this method, data is divided into
a series of pieces called blocks and each
data block is stored on a different physical
drive. When each drive contains a block
of data, the process starts over with the
first physical drive. When the size of the
data block is carefully selected, the
chance that the information needed can
be read from or written to multiple physi-
cal drives at once is increased, greatly
increasing the performance of the
composite drive. See also block, block
size, and RAID.
'(
Abbreviation for static random-access
memory. Because SRAM chips do not re-
quire continual refreshing, they are
substantially faster than DRAM chips.
SRAM is used mostly for external cache
memory.
8)
Abbreviation for super video graphics ar-
ray. See also VGA.
<
See parameter.
Sync negotiation is a SCSI feature that al-
lows the host adapter and its attached
SCSI devices to transfer data in synchro-
nous mode. Synchronous data transfer is
faster than asynchronous data transfer.
The rules that dictate how you must type
a command or instruction so that the com-
puter will understand it.
As the main circuit board, the system
board usually contains most of your com-
puter's integral components, such as the
following:
Microprocessor
RAM
Expansion-card connectors
Controllers for standard peripheral
devices such as the keyboard
Various ROM chips
Frequently used synonyms for system
board are motherboard and logic board.
System diskette is a synonym for boota-
ble diskette.
System memory is a synonym for RAM.