TYAN S2390 TRINITY KT, Manual

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NVRAM ROM and EEPROM are both examples of N on- V olatile RAM , memory that
holds its data without power. DRAM, in contrast, is volatile.
OEMs ( O riginal E quipment M anufacturers) like Compaq or IBM package other
companies’ motherboards and hardware inside their case and sell them.
The parallel port transmits the bits of a byte on eight different wires at the same time
(that is, in parallel form, eight bits at the same time).
PCI stands for P eripheral C omponent I nterconnect. PCI is a 32-bit local bus (data
pathway) which is faster than the ISA bus. Local buses are those which operate within
a single system (as opposed to a network bus, which connects multiple systems).
The PCI PIO ( PCI P rogrammable I nput/ O utput) modes are the data transfer modes
used by IDE drives. These modes use the CPU for data transfer (DMA channels do
not). PCI refers to the type of bus used by these modes to communicate with the CPU.
PCI-to-PCI bridge allows you to connect multiple PCI devices onto one PCI slot.
Pipeline burst SRAM is a fast secondary cache. It is used as a secondary cache
because SRAM is slower than SDRAM, but usually larger. Data is cached first to the
faster primary cache, and then, when the primary cache is full, to the slower secondary
cache.
Pipelining improves system performance by allowing the CPU to begin executing a
second instruction before the first is completed. A pipeline can be likened to an
assembly line, with a given part of the pipeline repeatedly executing a set part of an
operation on a series of instructions.
PM timers ( P ower M anagement timers ) are software timers that count down the
number of seconds or minutes until the system times out and enters sleep, suspend, or
doze mode.
PnP is an acronym for Plug and Play, a design standard that has become ascendant in
the industry. Plug and Play devices require little set-up to use. Novice end users can
simply plug them into a computer that is running on a Plug and Play-aware operating
system (such as Windows 95), and go to work. Devices and operating systems that are
not Plug and Play require you to reconfigure your system each time you add or change
any part of your hardware.
The term RAM ( R andom A ccess M emory), while technically referring to a type of
memory where any byte can be accessed without touching the adjacent data, is often
used to refer to the system’s main memory. This memory is available to any program
running on the computer.
Appendix
Glossary