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4 lines
1.0 KiB
Plaintext
cycle
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1. n. The basic unit of computation. What every hacker wants more of (noted hacker Bill Gosper described himself as a junkie ). One can describe an instruction as taking so many clock s. Often the computer can access its memory once on every clock , and so one speaks also of memory s. These are technical meanings of . The jargon meaning comes from the observation that there are only so many s per second, and when you are sharing a computer the s get divided up among the users. The more s the computer spends working on your program rather than someone else's, the faster your program will run. That's why every hacker wants more s: so he can spend less time waiting for the computer to respond. 2. By extension, a notional unit of human thought power, emphasizing that lots of things compete for the typical hacker's think time. I refused to get involved with the Rubik's Cube back when it was big. Knew I'd burn too many s on it if I let myself. 3. vt. Syn. bounce (sense 4), from the phrase power. Cycle the machine again, that serial port's still hung.
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