
Glossary
–18
29 September 1997 – Subject To Change
superpipelined
Describes a pipelined machine that has a larger number of pipe stages and more
complex scheduling and control. See also pipeline.
superscalar
Describes a machine architecture that allows multiple independent instructions to be
issued in parallel during a given clock cycle.
tag
The part of a cache block that holds the address information used to determine if a
memory operation is a hit or a miss on that cache block.
TB
Translation buffer.
tristate
Refers to a bused line that has three states: high, low, and high-impedance.
TTL
Transistor-transistor logic.
UART
Universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter.
UNALIGNED
A datum of size 2
N
stored at a byte address that is not a multiple of 2
N
.
unconditional branch instructions
Instructions that write a return address into a register.
UNDEFINED
An operation that may halt the processor or cause it to lose information. Only privi-
leged software (that is, software running in kernel mode) can trigger an UNDE-
FINED operation.
UNPREDICTABLE
Results or occurrences that do not disrupt the basic operation of the processor; the
processor continues to execute instructions in its normal manner. Privileged or
unprivileged software can trigger UNPREDICTABLE results or occurrences.