thumb
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thumb
1. the first and usually shortest and thickest of the digits of the hand, composed of two short bones
2. the corresponding digit in other vertebrates
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
Thumb
(processor)An extension to the Advanced RISC Machine
architecture, announced on 06 March 1995 by Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. By identifying the critical subset of the ARM
instruction set and encoding it into 16 bits, ARM has
succeeded in reducing typical program size by 30-40% from
ARM's already excellent code density. Since this Thumb
instruction set uses less memory for program storage, cost is
further reduced.
All Thumb-aware processor cores combine the capability to execute both the 32-bit ARM and the 16-bit Thumb instruction sets. Careful design of the Thumb instructions allow them to be decompressed into full ARM instructions transparently during normal instruction decoding without any performance penalty. This differs from other 32-bit processors, like the Intel 486SX, with a 16-bit data bus, which require two 16-bit memory accesses to execute every 32-bit instruction and so halve performance.
The patented Thumb decompressor has been carefully designed with only a small amount of circuitry additional to the existing instruction decoder, so chip size and thus cost do not significantly increase. Designers can easily interleave fast ARM instructions (for performance critical parts of a program) with compact Thumb code to save memory.
All Thumb-aware processor cores combine the capability to execute both the 32-bit ARM and the 16-bit Thumb instruction sets. Careful design of the Thumb instructions allow them to be decompressed into full ARM instructions transparently during normal instruction decoding without any performance penalty. This differs from other 32-bit processors, like the Intel 486SX, with a 16-bit data bus, which require two 16-bit memory accesses to execute every 32-bit instruction and so halve performance.
The patented Thumb decompressor has been carefully designed with only a small amount of circuitry additional to the existing instruction decoder, so chip size and thus cost do not significantly increase. Designers can easily interleave fast ARM instructions (for performance critical parts of a program) with compact Thumb code to save memory.
thumb
(jargon)The slider or "bubble" on a window system
scrollbar. So called because moving it allows you to browse
through the contents of a text window in a way analogous to
thumbing through a book.
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)
thumb
(1) See scroll bar and thumb culture.(2) (Thumb) An extension to the architecture of an ARM chip that provides enhanced code density. It stores a subset of 32-bit instructions as compressed 16-bit instructions and decompresses them back to 32 bits upon execution. See ARM.
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