Acronym Definition
Bridge board Bridge board. A PCI board/card that provides front panel control signals from the
motherboard to the power backplane and SATA signals from the motherboard to the
disk backplane.
FPGA Field Programmable Gate Array. An integrated circuit designed to be configured by a
customer after it is manufactured.
GPU Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). A processor chip that performs rapid mathematical
calculations, primarily for the purpose of rendering images. GPUs perform parallel
operations on multiple sets of data.
KVM Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM). A rackmounted drawer unit with display screen,
keyboard, and mouse or touch pad used to control multiple computers in a data
centers.
I²C Inter-Integrated Circuit. A multi-master, multi-slave, packet switched, single-ended,
serial computer bus. It is typically used for attaching lower-speed peripheral ICs to
processors and microcontrollers in short-distance, intra-board communication. I²C is
often spelled I2C and pronounced I-two-C.
IFB Interface board. A printed circuit board (PCB) assembly used for the transmission of
signals between different components/systems within the server.
MDC Management daughter card. A printed circuit board (PCB) assembly with IO interface
used to configure, monitor, and manage server subsystems and components.
NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe). A logical device interface specification for
accessing non-volatile storage media attached through a PCI Express (PCIe) bus.
NVMe is commonly flash memory that comes in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs).
PCIe 3.0 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, 3rd generation I/O.
PCIe switch board A PCIe expansion backplane with 10 PCIe x16 Gen3 slots that expand the
motherboard PCIe lanes and computing resources.
PLX PLX Technology, Inc. is the manufacturer of the PEX8796 PCIe 3.0 multiple-host
switching integrated circuit (IC) chips used on the PCIe switch board.
RU Rack unit. Abbreviated RU or U, is a height measurement defined as 44.5 mm (1.75
in). Most frequently refers to the overall height of 19-inch and 23-inch rack frames, as
well as the height of servers/equipment that mounts in these frames.
SATA Serial AT Attachment (SATA). A computer bus interface that connects host bus
adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and solid-state drives.
SMBus System Management Bus. A single-ended, simple, two-wire bus used for lightweight
communication. It is typically used in computer motherboards for on/off communication
with the power source.
SSD Solid-state storage device (SSD). SSDs use integrated circuit assemblies as memory
to store data persistently so the data can continue to be accessed. SSDs have no
moving mechanical components as do traditional electromechanical magnetic disks
such as hard disk drives (HDDs).
About the CS-Storm 500GT 3U Server Hardware Guide
H-6150 (Rev C) 4
