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6. Glossary

AP: Application Processor, any x86 processor other than the Bootstrap Processor on IA-32 SMP systems

ACPI: Advanced Configuration and Power Interface

APIC: Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller

APM: Advanced Power Management, a BIOS-managed power management specification for personal computers

BSP: Bootstrap Processor, the primary booting processor on IA-32 SMP systems

BSS: Block Started by Symbol: the uninitialized data segment

BKL: Big Kernel Lock, the Linux global kernel lock

CRn: Control Register n, i386-specific control registers

FPU: Floating Point Unit, a separate math coprocessor device

GB: gigabyte (1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes)

GDT: Global Descriptor Table, an i386 memory management table

IA: Intel Architecture (also i386, x86)

IDT: Interrupt Descriptor Table, an i386-specific table that contains information used in handling interrupts

initrd: initial RAM disk (see "linux/Documentation/initrd.txt")

IPC: Inter-Process Communication

IPI: Inter-processor Interrupt, a method of signaling interrupts between multiple processors on an SMP system

IRDA: InfraRed Data Association

IRQ: Interrupt ReQuest

ISA: Industry Standard Architecture

KB: kilobyte (1024 bytes)

LDT: Local Descriptor Table, an i386-specific memory management table that is used to describe memory for each non-kernel process

MB: megabyte (1024 * 1024 bytes)

MCA: Micro Channel Architecture, used in IBM PS/2 computers

MP: Multi-processor

MSW: Machine Status Word

MTRR: Memory Type Range Registers

PAE: Physical Address Extension: extends the address space to 64 GB instead of 4 GB

PCI: Peripheral Component Interconnect, an industry standard for connecting devices on a local bus in a computer system

PCMCIA: Personal Computer Memory Card International Association; defines standards for PCMCIA cards and CardBus PC Cards

PIC: Programmable Interrupt Controller

PNP: Plug aNd Play

PSE: Page Size Extension: allows 4 MB pages

SMP: Symmetric Multi Processor/Processing

TLB: Translation Lookaside Buffer, i386-specific processor cache of recent page directory and page table entries

TSS: Task State Segment, an i386-specific task data structure

UP: Uniprocessor (single CPU) system.