Glossary of Acronyms

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BAPCo - Business Applications Performance Corporation. A set of benchmarks for PC applications focusing on system performance.

BBS - Bulletin Board System. A computer that operates with a program and a modem to enable other computers with modems to communicate with it, often on a round the clock basis. Thousands of PC related bulletin board systems offer a wealth of information and public domain software that can be downloaded.

BDC - Backup Domain Controller. A copy of a domains directory database which contains all account and security policy information for the domain. The copy is synchronized periodically and automatically with the master copy on the primary domain controller (PDC). BDCs also authenticate user logons and can be promoted to function as PDCs as needed Multiple BDCs can exist on a domain.

BER - Basic Encoding Rules. Standard rules for encoding data units described in ASN.1. Sometimes incorrectly lumped under the term ASN.1, which properly refers only to the abstract syntax description language, not the encoding technique.

BGA - Ball Grid Array. An IC package that uses an array of solder balls, instead of pins, to connect a PC board.

BGP - Border Gateway Protocol. The Border Gateway Protocol is an exterior gateway protocol defined in RFC 1771. It's design is based on experience gained with EGP, as defined in RFC 904, and EGP usage in the NSFNET backbone, as described in RFC's 1092 and 1093.

BICMOS - Bipolar CMOS. An IC manufacturing process combining bipolar and CMOS circuits.

BIND - Berkeley Internet Name Domain. A public domain version of DNS available for most flavors of UNIX. Implementation of a DNS server developed and distributed by the University of California at Berkeley. Many Internet hosts run BIND, and it is the ancestor of many commercial BIND implementations.

BIOS - Basic Input/Output System. All computer hardware has to work with software through an interface. The BIOS gives the computer a little built-in starter kit to run the rest of software's from floppy disks (FDD) and hard disks (HDD). The BIOS is responsible for booting the computer by providing a basic set of instructions. It performs all the tasks that need to be done at start-up time: POST (Power-On Self Test, booting an operating system from FDD or HDD). Furthermore, it provides an interface to the underlying hardware for the operating system in the form of a library of interrupt handlers. For instance, each time a key is pressed, the CPU (Central Processing Unit) perform an interrupt to read that key. This is similar for other input/output devices (Serial and parallel ports, video cards, sound cards, hard disk controllers, etc.). Some older PC's cannot cooperate with all the modern hardware because their BIOS doesn't support that hardware. The operating system cannot call a BIOS routine to use it; this problem can be solved by replacing your BIOS with an newer one, that does support your new hardware, or by installing a device driver for the hardware.

Setup is the set of procedures enabling the configure a computer according to its hardware characteristics. It allows you to change the parameters with which the BIOS configures your chip set. The original IBM PC was configured by means of DIP switches buried on the motherboard. Setting PC and XT DIP switches properly was something of an arcane art. DIP switches/jumpers are still used for memory configuration and clock speed selection. When the PC-AT was introduced, it included a battery powered CMOS memory which contained configuration information. CMOS was originally set by a program on the Diagnostic Disk, however later clones incorporated routines in the BIOS which allowed the CMOS to be (re)configured if certain magic keystrokes were used.

Unfortunately as the chip sets controlling modern CPUs have become more complex, the variety of parameters specified in SETUP has grown. Moreover, there has been little standardization of terminology between the half dozen BIOS vendors, three dozen chip set makers and large number of motherboard vendors. Complaints about poor motherboard documentation of SETUP parameters are very common.

To exacerbate matters, some parameters are defined by BIOS vendors, others by chip set designers, others by motherboard designers, and others by various combinations of the above. Parameters intended for use in Design and Development, are intermixed with parameters intended to be adjusted by technicians -- who are frequently just as baffled by this stuff as everyone else is. No one person or organization seems to understand all the parameters available for any given SETUP.

A PC consists of different functional parts installed on its motherboard: ISA (Industry Standard Architecture), EISA (Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture) VESA (Video Enhanced Standards Association) and PCI (Peripheral Component Interface) slots, memory, cache memory, keyboard plug etc. Not all of these are present on every motherboard. The chip set enables a set of instructions so the CPU can work (communicate) with other parts of the motherboard. Nowadays most of the discrete chips; PIC (Programmable Interrupt Controller), DMA (Direct Memory Access), MMU (Memory Management Unit), cache, etc. are packed together on one, two or three chips; the chip set. Since chip sets of a different brand are not the same, for every chip set there is a BIOS version. Now we have fewer and fewer chip sets which do the job. Some chip sets have more features, some less. OPTI is such a commonly used chip set. In some well integrated motherboards, the only components present are the CPU, the two BIOS chips (BIOS and Keyboard BIOS), one chip set IC, cache memory (DRAMs, Dynamic Random Access Memory), memory (SIMMs, Single Inline Memory Module, most of the time) and a clock chip.

BIST - Built In Self Testing. A function supplied the Intel Pentium processor which provides 100% single stuck at fault coverage of the microcode and large PLA's, as well as testing of the instruction cache, data cache, Transition Lookaside Buffers (TLB's), and constant ROM's.

BNC - British National Connector. A type of connector plug and jack system. Originally designed in England for television set antennas, the BNC is a type of connector designed for use with coaxial cabling. Male and female BNC's are available. Although the term is redundant, BNCs are usually referred to as BNC connectors. Often used in local area network cabling systems that use coaxial cable, such as Ethernet and ARCnet, and also used frequently for video cabling systems.

BOC - Bell Operating Company. More commonly referred to as RBOC for Regional Bell Operating Company. The local telephone company in each of the seven U.S. regions.

BOOTP - The Bootstrap Protocol. Described in RFC 951 and 1542, BOOTP is used for booting diskless nodes and configure systems. DHCP is an extension of BOOTP.

BPS - Bits per Second. The number of binary digits, or bits, transmitted per second. Sometimes confused with baud. BPS is a measure of speed at which a device, such as a modem, can transfer data.

BRI - Basic Rate Interface. The most commonly used ISDN line configuration. Combines two 64 Kbps B data channels with one 16 Kbps D overhead channel over an ordinary two wire telephone line. B channels carry circuit oriented data or voice traffic while D channels carry call control signals BRI lines combine voice and data over a single service line.

BSD - Berkeley Software Distribution. Term used when describing different versions of the Berkeley UNIX software, as in 4.3BSD. Implementation of the UNIX operating system and its utilities developed and distributed by the University of California at Berkeley. BSD is usually preceded by the versions number of the distribution, e.g. 4.3 BSD is the version 4.3 of the Berkeley UNIX distribution. Many Internet hosts run BSD software, and it is the ancestor of many commercial UNIX implementations.

BTB - Branch Target Buffer. A small, typically 128 to 512 entry, associative memory that watches the Icache index and tries to predict which Icache index should be accessed next, based on branch history. Pentium Pro processors use a variant of Yeh's algorithm (IEEE Micro-24 conference proceedings-1991).

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Compiled by Scott McArdle, MagnaCom Limited. I hope this list has helped you and if there is an item that should be on this list, please let me know. Thanks. PS, I've spent 100's of hours maintaining this list, please don't be a LAMER.