Glossary 3
ASIC
Application Specific Integrated Circuit. A chip designed for use on a
particular circuit board, or for a very narrow range of use. The digital
signal processor chip on a modem is an ASIC.
asynchronous
Refers to operations that do not require the clocks of communicating
devices to be coordinated. Instead, the devices send signals to each
other indicating readiness to receive or send. Compare synchronous.
asynchronous cache
The slowest, most inexpensive type of secondary SRAM cache,
running at speeds of 15 to 20 ns.
ATA
AT Attachment. A standard for connecting hard drives or other
devices to an AT bus; synonymous with IDE.
AT bus
The AT bus system with support chips (DMA, PIC, etc) and a 16-bit
bus slot. The AT bus is strictly defined by ISA.
audio
Relating to or capable of producing sound. Multimedia computers
make extensive use of audio.
AVI
A digital movie format created by Microsoft. AVI is short for
“audio/video interleave,” a method of including a digital movie and
its accompanying sound in the same file. Files in the AVI format
have the .AVI extension.
B
bad sector
Part of a hard drive or diskette drive storage medium that doesn’t
hold data. Formatting generally detects and marks these areas so they
won’t be used. Certain utility programs do, too, and it is a good idea
to run this type of utility occasionally to prevent data loss if the
condition of the drive changes.