Owner`s manual

Glossary
Adapter
A node that interfaces other buses, communication lines, or peripheral
devices to the XMI bus or the VAXBI bus.
Address space
The 1 terabyte of physical address space that the XMI bus is capable of
supporting; currently the XMI bus supports 1 gigabyte of physical memory.
Asymmetric multiprocessing
A multiprocessing configuration in which the processors are not equal in
their ability to execute operating system code. In general, a single processor
is designated as the primary, or master, processor; other processors are
the slaves. The slave processors are limited to performing certain tasks,
whereas the master processor can perform all system tasks. Contrast with
Symmetric multiprocessing.
Bandwidth
The data transfer rate measured in information units transferred per unit
of time (for example, Mbytes per second).
Boot device
Contains the bootblock and typically also contains the virtual memory boot
program (VMB). A VAX 6000 series system can be booted from one of four
boot devices: the console load device, a local system disk, a disk connected
to the system through a CI adapter, or a disk connected to the system
through the Ethernet.
Boot primitives
Small programs stored in ROM on each processor with the console program.
Boot primitives read the bootblock from boot devices. There is a boot
primitive for each type of boot device.
Boot processor
The CPU module that boots the operating system and communicates with
the console.
Glossary–1