NonStop S-Series Hardware Installation and FastPath Guide (G06.26+)

Glossary
HP NonStop S-Series Hardware Installation and FastPath Guide—529876-001
Glossary-65
microcode
microcode. Any machine code or data that can run in a microprocessor. HP produces two
types of microcode for HP NonStop™ systems: volatile and nonvolatile. Volatile
microcode is loaded into the volatile random-access memory (RAM) of some types of
printed wiring assemblies (PWAs) and is not retained in a host PWA when power to the
PWA is interrupted. For nonvolatile microcode, see firmware. See also millicode.
midplane. A board that has connectors, on one or both sides of the board, into which circuit
board assemblies plug. Midplanes are located inside enclosures.
millicode. The system’s lowest-level machine-dependent code, often coded in assembler
language. TNS/R millicode is functionally similar to the microcode on TNS systems.
The system has several types of millicode, including machine interrupt handlers,
operating system primitives, routines implicitly called from native-compiled code,
emulators for TNS floating-point arithmetic, and emulators for privileged-only or long-
running TNS machine operations.
MIPS Computer Systems, Incorporated. RISC processor manufacturer.
MIPS region of a TNS object file. The region of a TNS object file that contains MIPS
instructions and the tables necessary to execute the instructions in accelerator mode
on a TNS/R system. Accelerator creates this region and writes it into the TNS object
file.
MIPS RISC instructions. Register-oriented 32-bit machine instructions in the MIPS-1 RISC
instruction set that are native to and directly executed on TNS/R systems. MIPS RISC
instructions do not execute on TNS systems. Contrast with TNS instructions.
Accelerator-generated MIPS RISC instructions are produced by accelerating TNS
object code. Native-compiled MIPS RISC instructions are produced by compiling
source code with a TNS/R native compiler.
MIPS RISC word. An instruction-set-defined unit of memory. A MIPS RISC word is 4 bytes
(32 bits) wide, beginning on any 4-byte boundary in memory. Contrast with TNS word
and word
.
mirrored disk or volume. A pair of identical disk drives that are used together as a single
logical volume. One drive is considered primary, and the other is called the mirror.
Each byte of data written to the primary drive is also written to the mirror drive. If the
primary drive fails, the mirror drive can continue operations. See also volume
.
missed address file (MAF). A file used by the HP NonStop™ operating system during
memory caching operations.
MMF PIC. See multimode fiber-optic (MMF) plug-in card (PIC)
.
MMF ServerNet cable. See multimode fiber-optic (MMF) ServerNet cable
.
MO. Maintenance orchestrator.