Technical data

Glossary
MFLOPS: See megaflops.
MIPS: A measure of the performance of a computer—the rate at which
the computer executes instructions. Expressed in terms of "millions of
instructions per second."
MTF: Match true/false: When masked operations are enabled, only elements
for which the Vector Mask Register bit matches true (or false, depending on
the condition) are operated upon.
optimizer: A program that scans code and changes the sequence or placement
of the code to allow it to run faster and more efficiently on the scalar or
vector processor. The program also reports dependencies that it cannot
resolve.
overlapping: Executing two or more instructions so part of their execution
occurs at the same time. For example, while one instruction is performing
an arithmetic operation, another is storing results to memory.
parallelization: The part of the compilation process that prepares a section of
source code for parallel processing.
parallel processing: Concurrent execution of multiple segments from the
same program image.
peak MFLOPS: The theoretical maximum number of floating-point operations
per second; a vector processor’s best attainable performance.
pipe, or pipeline: A section of a processor that performs a specific function.
For example, one pipe can be used for addition and subtraction, one for
multiply, and one for load/store operations. Each operates independently
from the others. Also called function unit.
pipeline length: The number of segments of a pipeline within one function
unit, which is the limit of the number of elements that can be executed in
that function unit at one time.
pipelining: A technique used in high-performance processors whereby a
stream of data is processed in contiguous subtasks at separate stations
along the pipeline.
recursion: A process in which one of its steps makes use of the results of steps
from an earlier statement. Also called recurrence.
scalar: A single element or number.
Glossary–4