Atmel ARM-Based Evaluation Kit for SAM4S16C, 32-Bit ARM® Cortex® Microcontroller ATSAM4S-WPIR-RD ATSAM4S-WPIR-RD Data Sheet

Product codes
ATSAM4S-WPIR-RD
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SAM4S Series [DATASHEET]
Atmel-11100G-ATARM-SAM4S-Datasheet_27-May-14
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12.12 Glossary
This glossary describes some of the terms used in technical documents from ARM.
Abort
A mechanism that indicates to a processor that the value associated with a memory access is invalid. 
An abort can be caused by the external or internal memory system as a result of attempting to access 
invalid instruction or data memory.
Aligned
A data item stored at an address that is divisible by the number of bytes that defines the data size is 
said to be aligned. Aligned words and halfwords have addresses that are divisible by four and two 
respectively. The terms word-aligned and halfword-aligned therefore stipulate addresses that are 
divisible by four and two respectively.
Banked register
A register that has multiple physical copies, where the state of the processor determines which copy is 
used. The Stack Pointer, SP (R13) is a banked register.
Base register
In instruction descriptions, a register specified by a load or store instruction that is used to hold the 
base value for the instruction’s address calculation. Depending on the instruction and its addressing 
mode, an offset can be added to or subtracted from the base register value to form the address that is 
sent to memory. 
See also 
Big-endian (BE)
Byte ordering scheme in which bytes of decreasing significance in a data word are stored at 
increasing addresses in memory. 
See also 
Big-endian memory
Memory in which:
a byte or halfword at a word-aligned address is the most significant byte or halfword within the word at 
that address, 
a byte at a halfword-aligned address is the most significant byte within the halfword at that address. 
See also 
.
Breakpoint
A breakpoint is a mechanism provided by debuggers to identify an instruction at which program 
execution is to be halted. Breakpoints are inserted by the programmer to enable inspection of register 
contents, memory locations, variable values at fixed points in the program execution to test that the 
program is operating correctly. Breakpoints are removed after the program is successfully tested.