%all.entities; ]> ACPI Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, an industry specification for BIOS and hardware extensions to configure PC hardware and perform power management. Windows 2000 and later, as well as Linux 2.4 and later 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 . AMD-V The hardware virtualization features built into modern AMD processors. See . 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 APIC Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller, a newer version of the original PC PIC (programmable interrupt controller).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, called a 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 later 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 interfaces which is synonymous with IDE. See . 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. &product-name; ships with its own virtual BIOS that runs when a virtual machine is started. COM Microsoft Component Object Model, a programming infrastructure for modular software. COM enables applications to provide application programming interfaces which can be accessed from various other programming languages and applications. &product-name; makes use of COM both internally and externally to provide a comprehensive API to 3rd party developers. DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. This enables a networking device in a network to acquire its IP address and other networking details automatically, in order to avoid having to configure all devices in a network with fixed IP addresses. &product-name; has a built-in DHCP server that delivers an IP addresses to a virtual machine when networking is configured to NAT. See . EFI Extensible Firmware Interface, a firmware built into computers which is designed to replace the aging BIOS. Originally designed by Intel, most modern operating systems can now boot on computers which have EFI instead of a BIOS built into them. See . EHCI Enhanced Host Controller Interface, the interface that implements the USB 2.0 standard. GUI Graphical User Interface. Commonly used as an antonym to a "command line interface". In the context of &product-name;, we sometimes refer to the main graphical VirtualBox program as the "GUI", to differentiate it from the VBoxManage interface. GUID See UUID. IDE Integrated Drive Electronics, an industry standard for hard disk interfaces. See . I/O APIC See APIC. iSCSI Internet SCSI. See . MAC Media Access Control, a part of an Ethernet network card. A MAC address is a 6-byte number which identifies a network card. It is typically written in hexadecimal notation where the bytes are separated by colons, such as 00:17:3A:5E:CB:08. MSI Message Signaled Interrupts, as supported by modern chipsets such as the ICH9. See . As opposed to traditional pin-based interrupts, with MSI, a small amount of data can accompany the actual interrupt message. This reduces the amount of hardware pins required and allows for more interrupts and better performance. NAT Network Address Translation. A technique to share networking interfaces by which an interface modifies the source and/or target IP addresses of network packets according to specific rules. Commonly employed by routers and firewalls to shield an internal network from the Internet, &product-name; can use NAT to easily share a host's physical networking hardware with its virtual machines. See . OVF Open Virtualization Format, a cross-platform industry standard to exchange virtual appliances between virtualization products. See . PAE Physical Address Extension. This enables access to more than 4 GB of RAM, even in 32-bit environments. See . PIC See APIC. PXE Preboot Execution Environment, an industry standard for booting PC systems from remote network locations. It includes DHCP for IP configuration and TFTP for file transfer. Using UNDI, a hardware independent driver stack for accessing the network card from bootstrap code is available. RDP Remote Desktop Protocol, a protocol developed by Microsoft as an extension to the ITU T.128 and T.124 video conferencing protocol. With RDP, a PC system can be controlled from a remote location using a network connection over which data is transferred in both directions. Typically graphics updates and audio are sent from the remote machine and keyboard and mouse input events are sent from the client. An &product-name; extension package by Oracle provides VRDP, an enhanced implementation of the relevant standards which is largely compatible with Microsoft's RDP implementation. See for details. SAS Serial Attached SCSI, an industry standard for hard disk interfaces. See . SATA Serial ATA, an industry standard for hard disk interfaces. See . SCSI Small Computer System Interface. An industry standard for data transfer between devices, especially for storage. See . SMP Symmetrical Multiprocessing, meaning that the resources of a computer are shared between several processors. These can either be several processor chips or, as is more common with modern hardware, multiple CPU cores in one processor. SSD Solid-state drive, uses microchips for storing data in a computer system. Compared to classical hard-disks they are having no mechanical components like spinning disks. TAR A widely used file format for archiving. Originally, this stood for Tape ARchive and was already supported by very early UNIX versions for backing up data on tape. The file format is still widely used today. For example, with OVF archives using an .ova file extension. See . UUID A Universally Unique Identifier, often also called GUID (Globally Unique Identifier). A UUID is a string of numbers and letters which can be computed dynamically and is guaranteed to be unique. Generally, it is used as a global handle to identify entities. &product-name; makes use of UUIDs to identify VMs, Virtual Disk Images (VDI files), and other entities. VM Virtual Machine. A virtual computer that &product-name; enables you to run on top of your actual hardware. See for details. VMM Virtual Machine Manager. The component of &product-name; that controls VM execution. See for a list of &product-name; components. VRDE VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension. This interface is built into &product-name; to allow &product-name; extension packages to supply remote access to virtual machines. An &product-name; extension package by Oracle provides VRDP support. See . VRDP See RDP. VT-x The hardware virtualization features built into modern Intel processors. See . xHCI eXtended Host Controller Interface, the interface that implements the USB 3.0 standard. XML The eXtensible Markup Language, a metastandard for all kinds of textual information. XML only specifies how data in the document is organized generally and does not prescribe how to semantically organize content. XPCOM Mozilla Cross Platform Component Object Model, a programming infrastructure developed by the Mozilla browser project which is similar to Microsoft COM and enables applications to provide a modular programming interface. &product-name; makes use of XPCOM on Linux both internally and externally to provide a comprehensive API to third-party developers.