White Papers

Dell Inc.
One Dell Way
Round Rock, Texas 78682
www.dell.com
October 18, 2019
Subject: Statement of Volatility – Dell Precision 5820/7820/7920 Tower
The Dell Precision 5820/7820/7920 Tower contains both volatile and non-volatile (NV)
components. Volatile components lose their data immediately upon removal of power from the
component. Non-volatile components continue to retain their data even after the power has
been removed from the component.
The following memory components are present in the 5820/7820/7920 Tower:
BIOS Configuration
The BIOS information is
stored in one flash IC, 32 MByte. This device is identified as SPI_1
on the motherboard. This part contains the boot code and data necessary to take the
hardware from a power-off or low-power state to a state where it is ready to be managed
by the operating system. No information pertaining to user applications or data is stored in
this device, however, they do store administrator and/or hard drive encryption passwords
if those features are enabled by the user.
Embedded Controller
The Embedded Controller contains a 4 Mbit of SPI flash IC and is identified as SPI_2 on
the motherboard. The EC contains the software necessary to manage low-level control
functions on the motherboard such as thermal control. No information pertaining to user
applications or data is stored in the SPI_2 device.
The embedded controller also contains 320 kBytes of volatile memory space and 128 Bytes
of RTC backed SRAM. The contents of this memory space are lost when power is
removed from the system.
PCH CMOS
The PCH, identified as US1H, contains a 256 Byte battery-backed memory. This memory
contains custom configuration data required by the BIOS to boot the system. It does not
store passwords or other user level data. The contents of this space are lost, after several
minutes, if the coin-cell battery is removed from the motherboard.
TPM (Trusted Platform Module) Security Device
This device (identified as UF1) stores TPM configuration data used by the hardware and
the security software offered by Dell. Encrypted user keys generated by the TPM device
for use by the security software are stored in this NVM.
CPLD
The CPLD IC is a factory-programmed Logic Device that incorporates various low-level
hardware logic functions into a single device. It is in location UO1 on the 7920 Tower, and
CPLD0 on the 7820 and 5820 Tower motherboard. No information pertaining to user
applications or data is stored on the CPLD. The CPLD contains 90 kBytes of flash
memory; however, this memory is left blank initially and is only used for debug information.
The CPLD can be reprogrammed during BIOS flash update. The BIOS flash update is not
capable of writing to this location.
Statement of Volatility – Dell Precision 5820/7820/7920 Tower
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