Glossary
A
ACPI Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, an industry specification for BIOS and hardware extensions to configure PC hardware and perform power manage- ment. Windows 2000 and higher as well as Linux 2.4 and higher support ACPI. Windows can only enable or disable ACPI support at installation time.
AHCI Advanced Host Controller Interface, the interface that supports SATA devices such as hard disks. See chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76.
API Application Programming Interface.
APIC Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller, a newer version of the original PC PIC (programmable interrupt controller). Most modern CPUs contain an on- chip APIC (“local APIC”). Many systems also contain an I/O APIC (input output APIC) as a separate chip which provides more than 16 IRQs. Windows 2000 and higher use a different kernel if they detect an I/O APIC during installation. Therefore an I/O APIC must not be removed after installation.
ATA Advanced Technology Attachment, an industry standard for hard disk inter- faces (synonymous with IDE). See chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76.
B
BIOS Basic Input/Output System, the firmware built into most personal computers which is responsible of initializing the hardware after the computer has been turned on and then booting an operating system. VirtualBox ships with its own virtual BIOS that runs when a virtual machine is started.
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