Halt and catch fire
humour, processor
(HCF) Any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The Motorola 6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became widely known. This instruction caused the processor to toggle a subset of the bus lines as rapidly as it could; in some configurations this could actually cause lines to burn up.
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(1995-12-14)
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- Halter
[hawl-ter] /ˈhɔl tər/ noun 1. a rope or strap with a noose or headstall for leading or restraining horses or cattle. 2. a rope with a noose for hanging criminals; the hangman’s noose; gallows. 3. death by hanging. 4. Also called halter top. a woman’s top, secured behind the neck and across the back, leaving […]
- Haltere
/ˈhæltɪə/ noun (pl) halteres (hælˈtɪəriːz) 1. one of a pair of short projections in dipterous insects that are modified hind wings, used for maintaining equilibrium during flight Also called balancer
- Halting
[hawl-ting] /ˈhɔl tɪŋ/ adjective 1. faltering or hesitating, especially in speech. 2. faulty or imperfect. 3. limping or lame: a halting gait. [hawlt] /hɔlt/ verb (used without object) 1. to stop; cease moving, operating, etc., either permanently or temporarily: They halted for lunch and strolled about. verb (used with object) 2. to cause to stop […]
- Haltingly
[hawl-ting] /ˈhɔl tɪŋ/ adjective 1. faltering or hesitating, especially in speech. 2. faulty or imperfect. 3. limping or lame: a halting gait. /ˈhɔːltɪŋ/ adjective 1. hesitant: halting speech 2. lame n. “act of limping or walking lamely,” early 14c., verbal noun from halt (v.). Related: Haltingly.
- Halting problem
The problem of determining in advance whether a particular program or algorithm will terminate or run forever. The halting problem is the canonical example of a provably unsolvable problem. Obviously any attempt to answer the question by actually executing the algorithm or simulating each step of its execution will only give an answer if the […]