Glossary | Dell UCS-51 specification

Driver

A device driver, often called a driver for short, is a program that allows the operating system or some other program to interface correctly with a peripheral device such as a printer or network PC card. Some device drivers, such as network drivers must be loaded from the config.sys file (with a device= statement) or as memory-resident programs (usually, from the autoexec.bat file). Others such as video drivers must load when you start the program for which they were designed.

DUD (Driver Update Diskette)

Acronym for driver update diskette. A DUD is an image of a diskette stored as a regular file. To use it, you have to create a real diskette from this file. The steps used to create the diskette depend on how the image is supplied.

Hardware

The mechanical, magnetic, electronic, and electrical components making up a computer system constitutes its hardware.

Hot Add/Remove

It is the addition/removal of a component while the system is running and operating normally.

Link

A connection between any two PCI Express devices is known as a link.

Firmware

Software stored in read-only memory (ROM) or Programmable ROM (PROM). Firmware is often responsible for the behavior of a system when it is first turned on. A typical example would be a monitor program in a system that loads the full operating system from disk or from a network and then passes control to the operating system.

Flash Memory

Sometimes referred as simply "flash", is a compact, solid-state, rewriteable, non-volatile memory device that retains its data when the power is turned off. It offers fast access time, low power consumption, and relative immunity to severe shock or vibration. It is a special type of EEPROM that can be erased and reprogrammed in blocks instead of one byte at a time. Many modern PCs have their BIOS stored on a flash memory chip so that it can easily be updated if necessary. Such a BIOS is sometimes called a flash BIOS.

MHz

Megahertz or one million cycles per second is a unit of frequency commonly used to measure the operating speed of a computer processor or any other electronic component.

Mirroring

The process of providing complete redundancy using two physical disks, by maintaining an exact copy of one physical disk’s data on the second physical disk. If one physical disk fails, the contents of the other physical disk can be used to maintain the integrity of the system and to rebuild the failed physical disk.