pTAL Conversion Guide

pTAL Conversion Guide—527302-002
Glossary-1
Glossary
accelerate. To speed up emulated execution of a TNS object file by applying the
Accelerator for TNS/R system execution or the TNS Object Code Accelerator (OCA)
for TNS/E system execution before running the object file.
accelerated mode. See TNS accelerated mode.
accelerated object code. The MIPS RISC instructions (in the MIPS region) that result from
processing a TNS object file with the Accelerator or the Intel® Itanium® instructions (in
the Itanium instruction region) that result from processing a TNS object file with the
Object Code Accelerator (OCA).
accelerated object file. A TNS object file that, in addition to its TNS instructions (in the
TNS region) and symbol information (in the symbol region), has been augmented by
the Accelerator with equivalent but faster MIPS RISC instructions (in the MIPS region),
the Object Code Accelerator (OCA) with equivalent but faster Intel® Itanium®
instructions (in the Itanium instruction region), or both.
Accelerator. A program optimization tool that processes a TNS object file and produces an
accelerated object file that also contains equivalent MIPS RISC instructions (called the
MIPS region). TNS object code that is accelerated runs faster on TNS/R processors
than TNS object code that is not accelerated. See also TNS Object Code Accelerator
(OCA).
atomic operation. An operation that has exclusive access to the memory that it references
until the operation completes. For example, the atomic operaton $ATOMIC_ADD is
equivalent to:
var := var + value;
After $ATOMIC_ADD reads var, no other process can access the memory location
associated with var until the read completes, value is added to var, and var is
written back to memory.
CISC. See complex instruction set computing (CISC).
complex instruction set computing (CISC). A processor architecture based on a large
instruction set, characterized by numerous addressing modes, multicycle machine
instructions, and many special-purpose instructions. Compare to reduced instruction
set computing (RISC) and explicitly parallel instruction set computing (EPIC).
EPIC. See explicitly parallel instruction set computing (EPIC).
EpTAL compiler. The compiler that takes pTAL source code as input and generates either
TNS/R native object code or TNS/E native object code. Compare to pTAL compiler and
TAL compiler.