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Binary File Descriptor Library
The Binary File Descriptor library (BFD) is the GNU Project's main mechanism for the portable manipulation of object files in a variety of formats. , it supports approximately 50 file formats and 25 instruction set architectures. History When David Henkel-Wallace of Cygnus Support proposed developing the library as a way to open up new business opportunities for the company, Richard Stallman said that it would be difficult; David's response was that it wasn't such a "Big Fucking Deal". Abbreviated to "BFD", this became the library name. "Binary File Descriptor" was invented later as a backronym for "BFD". Design BFD works by presenting a common abstract view of object files. An object file has a "header" with descriptive info; a variable number of "sections" that each has a name, some attributes, and a block of data; a symbol table; relocation entries; and so forth. Internally, BFD translates the data from the abstract view into the details of the bit/byte layout re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore (activist), John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software. Its tagline was: ''Making free software affordable''. For years, employees of Cygnus Solutions were the maintainers of several key GNU software products, including the GNU Debugger and GNU Binutils (which included the GNU Assembler and GNU Linker, Linker). It was also a major contributor to the GNU Compiler Collection, GCC project and drove the change in the project's management from having a single gatekeeper to having an independent committee. Cygnus developed Binary File Descriptor library, BFD, and used it to help port GNU to many architectures, in a number of cases working under Non-disclosure agreement, non-disclosure to produce tools used for initial bringup of software for a new chip design. Cygnus was also the original developer of Cygwin, a POSIX layer and the GNU toolkit po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instruction Set Architecture
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ''implementation'' of that ISA. In general, an ISA defines the supported instructions, data types, registers, the hardware support for managing main memory, fundamental features (such as the memory consistency, addressing modes, virtual memory), and the input/output model of implementations of the ISA. An ISA specifies the behavior of machine code running on implementations of that ISA in a fashion that does not depend on the characteristics of that implementation, providing binary compatibility between implementations. This enables multiple implementations of an ISA that differ in characteristics such as performance, physical size, and monetary cost (among other things), but t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GNU Assembler
The GNU Assembler, commonly known as gas or as, is the assembler developed by the GNU Project. It is the default back-end of GCC. It is used to assemble the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel, and various other software. It is a part of the GNU Binutils package. The GAS executable is named , the standard name for a Unix assembler. GAS is cross-platform, and both runs on and assembles for a number of different computer architectures. GAS is free software released under the GNU General Public License v3. History The first version of GAS was released in 1986–1987. It was written by Dean Elsner and supported the VAX architecture. General syntax GAS supports a general syntax that works for all of the supported architectures. The general syntax includes assembler directives and a method for commenting. The default syntax is AT&T syntax. Directives GAS uses assembler directives (also known as pseudo ops), which are keywords beginning with a period that behave similar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memory Address
In computing, a memory address is a reference to a specific memory location in memory used by both software and hardware. These addresses are fixed-length sequences of digits, typically displayed and handled as unsigned integers. This numerical representation is based on the features of CPU (such as the instruction pointer and incremental address registers). Programming language constructs often treat the memory like an array. Types Physical addresses A digital computer's main memory consists of many memory locations, each identified by a unique physical address (a specific code). The CPU or other devices can use these codes to access the corresponding memory locations. Generally, only system software (such as the BIOS, operating systems, and specialized utility programs like memory testers) directly addresses physical memory using machine code instructions or processor registers. These instructions tell the CPU to interact with a hardware component called the memory c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
64-bit
In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A computer that uses such a processor is a 64-bit computer. From the software perspective, 64-bit computing means the use of machine code with 64-bit virtual memory addresses. However, not all 64-bit instruction sets support full 64-bit virtual memory addresses; x86-64 and AArch64, for example, support only 48 bits of virtual address, with the remaining 16 bits of the virtual address required to be all zeros (000...) or all ones (111...), and several 64-bit instruction sets support fewer than 64 bits of physical memory address. The term ''64-bit'' also describes a generation of computers in which 64-bit processors are the norm. 64 bits is a word size that defines certain classes of computer archi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
32-bit
In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculations more efficiently and process more data per clock cycle. Typical 32-bit personal computers also have a 32-bit address bus, permitting up to 4 GiB of RAM to be accessed, far more than previous generations of system architecture allowed. 32-bit designs have been used since the earliest days of electronic computing, in experimental systems and then in large mainframe and minicomputer systems. The first hybrid 16/32-bit microprocessor, the Motorola 68000, was introduced in the late 1970s and used in systems such as the original Apple Macintosh. Fully 32-bit microprocessors such as the HP FOCUS, Motorola 68020 and Intel 80386 were launched in the early to mid 1980s and became dominant by the early 1990s. This gener ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big-endian
'' Jonathan_Swift.html" ;"title="Gulliver's Travels'' by Jonathan Swift">Gulliver's Travels'' by Jonathan Swift, the novel from which the term was coined In computing, endianness is the order in which bytes within a word (data type), word of digital data are transmitted over a data communication medium or Memory_address, addressed (by rising addresses) in computer memory, counting only byte significance compared to earliness. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE), terms introduced by Danny Cohen into computer science for data ordering in an Internet Experiment Note published in 1980. Also published at The adjective ''endian'' has its origin in the writings of 18th century Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift. In the 1726 novel '' Gulliver's Travels'', he portrays the conflict between sects of Lilliputians divided into those breaking the shell of a boiled egg from the big end or from the little end. By analogy, a CPU may read a digital word ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Processing Unit
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) operations. This role contrasts with that of external components, such as main memory and I/O circuitry, and specialized coprocessors such as graphics processing units (GPUs). The form, CPU design, design, and implementation of CPUs have changed over time, but their fundamental operation remains almost unchanged. Principal components of a CPU include the arithmetic–logic unit (ALU) that performs arithmetic operation, arithmetic and Bitwise operation, logic operations, processor registers that supply operands to the ALU and store the results of ALU operations, and a control unit that orchestrates the #Fetch, fetching (from memory), #Decode, decoding and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relocation (computer Science)
In software development, relocation is the process of assigning load addresses for position-dependent code and data of a program and adjusting the code and data to reflect the assigned addresses. A linker usually performs relocation in conjunction with ''symbol resolution'', the process of searching files and libraries to replace symbolic references or names of libraries with actual usable addresses in memory before running a program. Relocation is typically done by the linker at link time, but it can also be done at load time by a relocating loader, or at run time by the running program itself. Segmentation Object files are typically segmented into various memory segment or section types. Example segment types include code segment (.text), initialized data segment (.data), uninitialized data segment (.bss), or others as established by the programmer, such as common segments, or named static segments. Relocation table The relocation table is a list of address ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symbol Table
In computer science, a symbol table is a data structure used by a language translator such as a compiler or interpreter, where each identifier, symbol, constant, procedure and function in a program's source code is associated with information relating to its declaration or appearance in the source. In other words, the entries of a symbol table store the information related to the entry's corresponding symbol. Background A symbol table may only exist in memory during the translation process, or it may be embedded in the output of the translation, such as in an ABI object file for later use. For example, it might be used during an interactive debugging session, or as a resource for formatting a diagnostic report during or after execution of a program. Description The minimum information contained in a symbol table used by a translator and intermediate representation (IR) includes the symbol's name and its location or address. For a compiler targeting a platform with a concept ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
