Glossary
ARM DUI 0553A
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Glossary-3
ID121610
Non-Confidential
An exception can be an interrupt request, a fault, or a software-generated system exception.
Faults include attempting an invalid memory access, attempting to execute an instruction in an
invalid processor state, and attempting to execute an undefined instruction.
Exception service routine
.
Exception vector
Flat address mapping
A system of organizing memory in which each physical address in the memory space is the same
as the corresponding virtual address.
Halfword
A 16-bit data item.
Illegal instruction
An instruction that is architecturally Undefined.
Implementation-defined
The behavior is not architecturally defined, but is defined and documented by individual
implementations.
Implementation-specific
The behavior is not architecturally defined, and does not have to be documented by individual
implementations. Used when there are a number of implementation options available and the
option chosen does not affect software compatibility.
Index register
In some load and store instruction descriptions, the value of this register is used as an offset to
be added to or subtracted from the base register value to form the address that is sent to memory.
Some addressing modes optionally enable the index register value to be shifted prior to the
addition or subtraction.
See also
Instruction cycle count
The number of cycles that an instruction occupies the Execute stage of the pipeline.
Interrupt handler
A program that control of the processor is passed to when an interrupt occurs.
Interrupt vector
One of a number of fixed addresses in low memory, or in high memory if high vectors are
configured, that contains the first instruction of the corresponding interrupt handler.
Little-endian (LE)
Byte ordering scheme in which bytes of increasing significance in a data word are stored at
increasing addresses in memory.
See also
.
Little-endian memory
Memory in which:
•
a byte or halfword at a word-aligned address is the least significant byte or halfword
within the word at that address
•
a byte at a halfword-aligned address is the least significant byte within the halfword at that
address.
See also
.
Load/store architecture
A processor architecture where data-processing operations only operate on register contents, not
directly on memory contents.