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Glossary 173
RTC — Real-time clock.
SAS — Serial-attached SCSI.
SATA — Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. A standard interface between the
system board and storage devices.
SCSI — Small computer system interface. An I/O bus interface with faster data
transmission rates than standard ports.
SDRAM — Synchronous dynamic random-access memory.
sec — Second(s).
serial port — An I/O port used most often to connect a modem to your system. You
can usually identify a serial port on your system by its 9-pin connector.
service tag — A bar code label on the system used to identify it when you call Dell for
technical support.
simple disk volume — The volume of free space on a single dynamic, physical disk.
SMART — Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. Allows hard drives to
report errors and failures to the system BIOS and then display an error message on the
screen.
SMP — Symmetric multiprocessing. Used to describe a system that has two or more
processors connected via a high-bandwidth link and managed by an operating system,
where each processor has equal access to I/O devices.
SNMP — Simple Network Management Protocol. A standard interface that allows a
network manager to remotely monitor and manage workstations.
spanning — Spanning, or concatenating, disk volumes combines unallocated space
from multiple disks into one logical volume, allowing more efficient use of all the
space and all drive letters on a multiple-disk system.
striping — Disk striping writes data across three or more disks in an array, but only
uses a portion of the space on each disk. The amount of space used by a "stripe" is the
same on each disk used. A virtual disk may use several stripes on the same set of disks
in an array. See also guarding, mirroring, and RAID.
SVGA — Super video graphics array. VGA and SVGA are video standards for video
adapters with greater resolution and color display capabilities than previous standards.
system board — As the main circuit board, the system board usually contains most of
your system’s integral components, such as the processor, RAM, controllers for
peripherals, and various ROM chips.
system configuration information — Data stored in memory that tells a system what
hardware is installed and how the system should be configured for operation.
system diskette — See bootable diskette.
book.book Page 173 Thursday, August 30, 2007 3:30 PM