User's Manual
104 Glossary
HBA
Abbreviation for host bus adapter. A PCI adapter card
that resides in the system whose only function is to
convert data commands from PCI-bus format to
storage interconnect format (examples: SCSI, Fibre
Channel) and communicate directly with hard drives,
tape drives, CD drives, or other storage devices.
HMA
Abbreviation for high memory area. The first 64 KB of
extended memory above 1 MB. A memory manager
that conforms to the XMS can make the HMA a direct
extension of conventional memory. Also see XMM.
host adapter
A host adapter implements communication between
the system's bus and the controller for a peripheral
device. (hard drive controller subsystems include
integrated host adapter circuitry.) To add a SCSI
expansion bus to your system, you must install or
connect the appropriate host adapter.
HPFS
Abbreviation for the High Performance File System
option in the Windows NT operating systems.
HTTP
Abbreviation for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP
is the client-server TCP/IP protocol used on the World
Wide Web for the exchange of HTML documents.
HTTPS
Abbreviation for HyperText Transmission Protocol,
Secure. HTTPS is a variant of HTTP used by Web
browsers for handling secure transactions. HTTPS is a
unique protocol that is simply SSL underneath HTTP.
You need to use "https://" for HTTP URLs with SSL,
whereas you continue to use "http://" for HTTP URLs
without SSL.
ID
Abbreviation for identifier, commonly used when
referring to a user identifier (user ID), object identifier
(object ID), or hardware identifier (controller ID).
IDE
Abbreviation for Integrated Drive Electronics. IDE is
a computer system interface, used primarily for hard
drives and CDs.
I/O
Abbreviation for input/output. The keyboard is an
input device, and a printer is an output device. In
general, I/O activity can be differentiated from
computational activity. For example, when a program
sends a document to the printer, it is engaging in
output activity; when the program sorts a list of terms,
it is engaging in computational activity.
internal microprocessor cache
An instruction and data cache built in to the
microprocessor. The Intel
®
Pentium
®
microprocessor
includes a 16-KB internal cache, which is set up as an
8-KB read-only instruction cache and an 8-KB
read/write data cache.
IP address
Abbreviation for Internet Protocol address. See
TCP/IP.
IPMI
Abbreviation for Intelligent Platform Management
Interface, which is a part of systems management
technology.
IRQ
Abbreviation for interrupt request. A signal that data
is about to be sent to or received by a peripheral device
travels by an IRQ line to the microprocessor. Each
peripheral connection must be assigned an IRQ
number. For example, the first serial port in your
system (COM1) is assigned to IRQ4 by default. Two
devices can share the same IRQ assignment, but you
cannot operate both devices simultaneously.
KB
Abbreviation for kilobyte(s), 1024 bytes.