CS184b

Definitions and explanations for unfamiliar terms

• Day 2: April 2, 2003
  • Gadanekn Experiment: ``Gedanken'' is a German word for ``thought''. A thought experiment is one you carry out in your head. In physics, a ``gedanken experiment'' is used to refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because it can be reasoned about theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory involves thinking about a man in an elevator accelerating through space.)

    I grabbed this from FOLDOC. In class I did not intend to imply the neo-hacker usage implied by the second paragraph in the FOLDOC entry.

• Day 4: April 7, 2003
  • LRU -- Least Recently Used -- a policy for reallocating resources based on their past use (See H&P 3rd ed. p. 400); the hypothesis is that the least-recently used item is the one most likely to be dead at this point...or, at least, not to be needed for a long time.
  • def-use chain -- linkage of uses of a variable to its definition, a way of identifying the dataflow in programs; this is usually used in compilers for optimizations like copy propagation, and common-sub-expression elimination.
• Day 13: May 5, 2003
  • Transputer -- An early/simple microprocess intended as a building block for parallel systems---designed around CSP and Occam; built commercially by Inmos. For more detailed information, see the Transputer Archive. Maybe see Chapter 1 of Networks, Routers and Transputers: Function, Perforamnce and Applications for an introduction.