
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations
Glossary-5
Floating-point register (GPR)
. Any of the 32 registers in the floating-point
register file. These registers provide the source operands and
destination results for all floating-point data manipulation
instructions. Floating-point load instructions move data from
memory to registers, and floating-point store instructions move data
from registers to memory.
Flush
. An operation that causes a modified cache block to be invalidated and
the data to be written to memory.
Fraction
. In the binary representation of a floating-point number, the field of
the
significand
that lies to the right of its implied binary point.
General-purpose register (GPR)
. Any of the 32 registers in the general
purpose register file. These registers provide the source operands and
destination results for all integer data manipulation instructions.
Load instructions move data from memory to registers, and store
instructions move data from registers to memory.
Harvard architecture
. An architectural model featuring separate caches for
instruction and data.
IEEE 754
. A standard written by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers that defines operations and representations of binary
floating-point arithmetic.
Implementation
. A particular processor that conforms to the PowerPC
architecture, but may differ from other architecture-compliant
implementations for example in design, feature set, and
implementation of
optional
features. The PowerPC architecture has
many different implementations.
Implementation-dependent
. An aspect of a feature in a processor’s design
that is defined by a processor’s design specifications rather than by
the PowerPC architecture.
Implementation-specific
. An aspect of a feature in a processor’s design that
is not required by the PowerPC architecture, but for which the
PowerPC architecture may provide concessions to ensure that
processors that implement the feature do so consistently.
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