Glossary 143GlossaryThis section defines or identifies technical terms, abbreviations, andacronyms used in your system documents.A — Ampere(s).AC — Alternating current.ACPI — Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. A standard interface forenabling the operating system to direct configuration and power management.ambient temperature — The temperature of the area or room where the system islocated.ANSI — American National Standards Institute. The primary organization fordeveloping technology standards in the U.S.application — Software designed to help you perform a specific task or series of tasks.Applications run from the operating system.ASCII — American Standard Code for Information Interchange.asset tag — An individual code assigned to a system, usually by an administrator, forsecurity or tracking purposes.backup — A copy of a program or data file. As a precaution, back up your system’shard drive on a regular basis. Before making a change to the configuration of yoursystem, back up important start-up files from your operating system.backup battery — A battery that maintains system configuration, date, and timeinformation in a special section of memory when the system is turned off.beep code — A diagnostic message in the form of a pattern of beeps from yoursystem’s speaker. For example, one beep, followed by a second beep, and then a burstof three beeps is beep code 1-1-3.BIOS — Basic input/output system. Your system’s BIOS contains programs stored ona flash memory chip. The BIOS controls the following:• Communications between the processor and peripheral devices• Miscellaneous functions, such as system messagesbit — The smallest unit of information interpreted by your system.blade — A module that contains a processor, memory, and a hard drive. The modulesare mounted into a chassis that includes power supplies and fans.BMC — Baseboard management controller.
