Orthogonal instruction set

(wiki: orthogonality...) In computer science, an instruction set is said to be orthogonal if any instruction can use any register in any addressing mode. This terminology results from considering an instruction as a vector whose components are the instruction fields. One field identifies the registers to be operated upon, and another specifies the addressing mode. As with a set of mathematical basis vectors, which must be orthogonal if they are to represent any vector uniquely, only an orthogonal instruction set can uniquely encode all combinations of registers and addressing modes.