Glossary-8
MPC7400 RISC Microprocessor Users Manual
NaN
. An abbreviation for not a number; a symbolic entity encoded in
floating-point format. There are two types of NaNssignaling NaNs
and quiet NaNs.
No-op
. No-operation. A single-cycle operation that does not affect registers
or generate bus activity.
Normalization
. A process by which a oating-point value is manipulated
such that it can be represented in the format for the appropriate
precision (single- or double-precision). For a oating-point value to
be representable in the single- or double-precision format, the
leading implied bit must be a 1.
OEA (operating environment architecture)
. The level of the architecture
that describes PowerPC memory management model, supervisor-
level registers, synchronization requirements, and the exception
model. It also deTnes the time-base feature from a supervisor-level
perspective. Implementations that conform to the PowerPC OEA
also conform to the PowerPC UISA and VEA.
Optional
. A feature, such as an instruction, a register, or an exception, that is
deTned by the PowerPC architecture but not required to be
implemented.
Out-of-order.
An aspect of an operation that allows it to be performed ahead
of one that may have preceded it in the sequential model, for
example, speculative operations. An operation is said to be
performed out-of-order if, at the time that it is performed, it is not
known to be required by the sequential execution model.
See
In-order.
Out-of-order execution
. A technique that allows instructions to be issued
and completed in an order that differs from their sequence in the
instruction stream.
Overow
. An condition that occurs during arithmetic operations when the
result cannot be stored accurately in the destination register(s). For
example, if two 32-bit numbers are multiplied, the result may not be
representable in 32 bits.
Page
. A region in memory. The OEA deTnes a page as a 4-Kbyte area of
memory, aligned on a 4-Kbyte boundary.
Page access history bits
. The
changed
and
referenced
bits in the PTE keep
track of the access history within the page. The referenced bit is set
N
O
P