flat adj.
1. [common] Lacking any complex internal
structure. "That bitty box has only a flat filesystem, not a
hierarchical one." The verb form is flatten. 2. Said of a
memory architecture (like that of the VAX or 680x0) that is one big
linear address space (typically with each possible value of a
processor register corresponding to a unique core address), as
opposed to a `segmented' architecture (like that of the 80x86) in
which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair
(segmented designs are generally considered cretinous).
Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually
used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a Good Thing.
1. [common] Lacking any complex internal
structure. "That bitty box has only a flat filesystem, not a
hierarchical one." The verb form is flatten. 2. Said of a
memory architecture (like that of the VAX or 680x0) that is one big
linear address space (typically with each possible value of a
processor register corresponding to a unique core address), as
opposed to a `segmented' architecture (like that of the 80x86) in
which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair
(segmented designs are generally considered cretinous).
Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually
used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a Good Thing.
Related:
- flat: adj. 1. Lacking any complex internal structure.
"That {bitty box} has only a flat filesystem, not... - moby /moh'bee/
[MIT: seems to have been in use among
model railroad fans years ago.
Derived from Melville's "Moby Dick" (some say from... - vaxocentrism /vak`soh-sen'trizm/ n.
[analogy with
`ethnocentrism'] A notional disease said to afflict C programmers
who persist in coding according to certain assumptions that are
valid (esp.
under Unix) on VAXen but false elsewhere. Among ... - accumulator n. obs.
1. Archaic term for a register.
On-line use of it as a synonym for `register' is... - accumulator: n. 1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it
as a synonym for `register' is a fairly reliable indication that
the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the
architecture under discussion is quite old.
The term in full is almost never used of microprocessor... - naive adj.
1. Untutored in the perversities of some particular
program or system;
one who still tries to do things in an intuitive ... - domainist /doh-mayn'ist/ adj.
1. [Usenet, by pointed
analogy with "sexist",
"racist", etc.] Someone who judges people by the... - orthogonal: [from mathematics] adj. Mutually independent;
well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used... - orthogonal adj.
[from mathematics] Mutually independent;
well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in...
