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.
accumulator n. obs.
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....
orthogonal: [from mathematics] adj. Mutually independe well
separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of
its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or
capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the
entire `capability space' of the system and are in some sense
non-overlapping or mutually independent....
orthogonal adj.
[from mathematics] Mutually independe
well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization
of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or
capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire
`capability space' of the system and are in some sense
non-overlapping or mutually independent....
