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Compressed Instruction Set
A compressed instruction set, or simply compressed instructions, are a variation on a microprocessor's instruction set architecture (ISA) that allows instructions to be represented in a more compact format. In most real-world examples, compressed instructions are 16 bits long in a processor that would otherwise use 32-bit instructions. The 16-bit ISA is a subset of the full 32-bit ISA, not a separate instruction set. The smaller format requires some tradeoffs: generally, there are fewer instructions available, and fewer processor registers can be used. The concept was originally introduced by Hitachi as a way to improve the code density of their SuperH RISC processor design as it moved from 16-bit to 32-bit instructions in the SH-5 version. The new design had two instruction sets, one giving access to the entire ISA of the new design, and a smaller 16-bit set known as SHcompact that allowed programs to run in smaller amounts of main memory. As the memory of even the smallest s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry required to perform the functions of a computer's central processing unit. The integrated circuit is capable of interpreting and executing program instructions and performing arithmetic operations. The microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock-driven, register-based, digital integrated circuit that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results (also in binary form) as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, and operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary number system. The integration of a whole CPU onto a single or a few integrated circuits using Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) greatly reduced the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accumulator (computing)
In a computer's central processing unit (CPU), the accumulator is a register in which intermediate arithmetic logic unit results are stored. Without a register like an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation (addition, multiplication, shift, etc.) to main memory, perhaps only to be read right back again for use in the next operation. Access to main memory is slower than access to a register like an accumulator because the technology used for the large main memory is slower (but cheaper) than that used for a register. Early electronic computer systems were often split into two groups, those with accumulators and those without. Modern computer systems often have multiple general-purpose registers that can operate as accumulators, and the term is no longer as common as it once was. However, to simplify their design, a number of special-purpose processors still use a single accumulator. Basic concept Mathematical operations often take place i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. Benchmarking is used to measure performance using a specific indicator (cost per unit of measure, productivity per unit of measure, cycle time of x per unit of measure or defects per unit of measure) resulting in a metric of performance that is then compared to others. Also referred to as "best practice benchmarking" or "process benchmarking", this process is used in management in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best-practice companies' processes, usually within a peer group defined for the purposes of comparison. This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to make improvements or adapt specific best practices, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-off event, but is often t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Shift
In computer science, a logical shift is a bitwise operation that shifts all the bits of its operand. The two base variants are the logical left shift and the logical right shift. This is further modulated by the number of bit positions a given value shall be shifted, such as ''shift left by 1'' or ''shift right by n''. Unlike an arithmetic shift, a logical shift does not preserve a number's sign bit or distinguish a number's exponent from its significand (mantissa); every bit in the operand is simply moved a given number of bit positions, and the vacant bit-positions are filled, usually with zeros, and possibly ones (contrast with a circular shift). A logical shift is often used when its operand is being treated as a sequence of bits instead of as a number. Logical shifts can be useful as efficient ways to perform multiplication or division of unsigned integers by powers of two. Shifting left by ''n'' bits on a signed or unsigned binary number has the effect of multiplying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Most Significant Bit
In computing, bit numbering is the convention used to identify the bit positions in a binary number. Bit significance and indexing In computing, the least significant bit (LSB) is the bit position in a binary integer representing the binary 1s place of the integer. Similarly, the most significant bit (MSB) represents the highest-order place of the binary integer. The LSB is sometimes referred to as the ''low-order bit'' or ''right-most bit'', due to the convention in positional notation of writing less significant digits further to the right. The MSB is similarly referred to as the ''high-order bit'' or ''left-most bit''. In both cases, the LSB and MSB correlate directly to the least significant digit and most significant digit of a decimal integer. Bit indexing correlates to the positional notation of the value in base 2. For this reason, bit index is not affected by how the value is stored on the device, such as the value's byte order. Rather, it is a property of the nu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIPS Architecture
MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, Inc. developed by MIPS Computer Systems, now MIPS Technologies, based in the United States. There are multiple versions of MIPS: including MIPS I, II, III, IV, and V; as well as five releases of MIPS32/64 (for 32- and 64-bit implementations, respectively). The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit; 64-bit versions were developed later. As of April 2017, the current version of MIPS is MIPS32/64 Release 6. MIPS32/64 primarily differs from MIPS I–V by defining the privileged kernel mode System Control Coprocessor in addition to the user mode architecture. The MIPS architecture has several optional extensions. MIPS-3D which is a simple set of floating-point SIMD instructions dedicated to common 3D tasks, MDMX (MaDMaX) which is a more extens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Addressing Mode
Addressing modes are an aspect of the instruction set architecture in most central processing unit (CPU) designs. The various addressing modes that are defined in a given instruction set architecture define how the machine language instructions in that architecture identify the operand(s) of each instruction. An addressing mode specifies how to calculate the effective memory address of an operand by using information held in registers and/or constants contained within a machine instruction or elsewhere. In computer programming, addressing modes are primarily of interest to those who write in assembly languages and to compiler writers. For a related concept see orthogonal instruction set which deals with the ability of any instruction to use any addressing mode. Caveats Note that there is no generally accepted way of naming the various addressing modes. In particular, different authors and computer manufacturers may give different names to the same addressing mode, or the sam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel 8088
The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range are unchanged, however. In fact, according to the Intel documentation, the 8086 and 8088 have the same execution unit (EU)—only the bus interface unit (BIU) is different. The original IBM PC is based on the 8088, as are its clones. History and description The 8088 was designed at Intel's laboratory in Haifa, Israel, as were a large number of Intel's processors. The 8088 was targeted at economical systems by allowing the use of an eight-bit data path and eight-bit support and peripheral chips; complex circuit boards were still fairly cumbersome and expensive when it was released. The prefetch queue of the 8088 was shortened to four bytes, from the 8086's six bytes, and the prefetch algorithm was sli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ''The New York Times'' suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than (), with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC. The class formed a distinct group with its own software architectures and operating systems. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching as distinct from calculation and record keeping. Many were sold indirectly to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for final end use application. During the two decade lifetime of the minicomputer class (1965–1985), almost 100 companies formed and only a half ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mainframe
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and large-scale transaction processing. A mainframe computer is large but not as large as a supercomputer and has more processing power than some other classes of computers, such as minicomputers, servers, workstations, and personal computers. Most large-scale computer-system architectures were established in the 1960s, but they continue to evolve. Mainframe computers are often used as servers. The term ''mainframe'' was derived from the large cabinet, called a ''main frame'', that housed the central processing unit and main memory of early computers. Later, the term ''mainframe'' was used to distinguish high-end commercial computers from less powerful machines. Design Modern mainframe design is characterized less by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variable Length Instruction Set
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ''implementation''. 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 a family 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 that are capable of running the same machine code, so th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endianness
In computing, endianness, also known as byte sex, is the order or sequence of bytes of a word of digital data in computer memory. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE). A big-endian system stores the most significant byte of a word at the smallest memory address and the least significant byte at the largest. A little-endian system, in contrast, stores the least-significant byte at the smallest address. Bi-endianness is a feature supported by numerous computer architectures that feature switchable endianness in data fetches and stores or for instruction fetches. Other orderings are generically called middle-endian or mixed-endian. Endianness may also be used to describe the order in which the bits are transmitted over a communication channel, e.g., big-endian in a communications channel transmits the most significant bits first. Bit-endianness is seldom used in other contexts. Etymology Danny Cohen introduced the terms ''big-en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
