Intel Extensible Firmware Interface - Manual (Page 1063)

Glossary
Version 1.10 12/01/02 Glossary-15
System Management BIOS (SMBIOS)
A table-based interface that is required by the Wired for Management Baseline
Specification. It is used to relate platform-specific management information to
the OS or to an OS-based management agent.
System Partition A section of a block device that is treated as a logical whole. For a hard disk
with a legacy partitioning scheme, it is a contiguous grouping of sectors whose
starting sector and size are defined by the
Master Boot Record . For an EFI
Hard Disk , it is a contiguous grouping of sectors whose starting sector and size
are defined by the GUID Partition Table Header and the associated GUID
Partition Entries . For “El Torito” devices, it is a logical device volume. For a
diskette (floppy) drive, it is defined to be the entire medium (the term “diskette”
includes legacy 3.5” diskette drives as well as newer media such as the Iomega
Zip drive). System Partitions can reside on any medium that is supported by EFI
boot services. System Partitions support backward compatibility with legacy
Intel Architecture systems by reserving the first block (sector) of the partition for
compatibility code.
System Table Table that contains the standard input and output handles for an EFI application,
as well as pointers to the boot services and runtime services tables. It may also
contain pointers to other standard tables such as the
ACPI , SMBIOS , and SAL
System tables. A loaded image receives a pointer to its system table when it
begins execution. Also called the EFI System Table.
Task Priority Level (TPL)
The boot services environment exposes three task priority levels: “normal,”
“callback,” and “notify.”
Task Priority Services
The set of functions used to manipulate task priority levels. Includes
RaiseTPL() and RestoreTPL() .
TFTP See Trivial File Transport Protocol .
Time Format The format for expressing time in an EFI-compliant platform. For more
information, see Appendix A.
Time Services The set of functions used to manage time. Includes GetTime() , SetTime() ,
GetWakeupTime() , and SetWakeupTime() .
Timer Services The set of functions used to manipulate timers. Contains a single function,
SetTimer() .
TPL See Task Priority Level .
Trivial File Transport Protocol (TFTP)
A protocol used to download a Network Boot Program from a TFTP server.