SEX (computing)
- The acronym SEX (written in capital letters) redirects here. For other meanings, see Sex (disambiguation).
In computing, the SEX assembly language mnemonic has often been used for the "Sign EXtend" machine instruction found in the PDP-11 and many other computer architectures. A computer's or CPU's sex can also mean the endianness of the computer architecture used.[1] x86 computers does not have the same "byte sex"[2], as HC11 computers, for example. Special functions are sometimes needed[3] for computers of different sexes to communicate with each other over the internet[4], which protocols often defaults to using big endian byte coding.
SEX in software: rarely used jargon
The TLA SEX has humorously been said to stand for Software EXchange, meaning copying of software. As file sharing has sometimes spread computer viruses, it has been stated that “illicit SEX can transmit viral diseases to your computer.”
Other sightings
The Commodore 64 Video Interface Chip (VIC) II contains registers to double the size of the hardware sprites in one or both directions. The register $d017 (Sprite EXpand Y) contains 1 bit per sprite to allow expansion in the Y direction, while $d01d (Sprite EXpand X) alters the X size in the same manner.
References
- ^ For hardware, the Jargon File also reports the less common expression byte sex [1]. It is unclear whether this terminology is also used when more than two orderings are possible. Similarly, the manual for the ORCA/M assembler refers to a field indicating the order of the bytes in a number field as
NUMSEX, and the Mac OS X operating system refers to "byte sex" in its compiler tools [2]. - ^ The Jargon file
- ^ htons(), htonl(), ntohs(), ntohl()
- ^ The NUXI problem
 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. |