Architecture Classes



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Architecture Classes

PVM assigns an architecture name to each kind of machine on which it runs, to distinguish between machines that run different executables, because of hardware or operating system differences. Many standard names are defined, and others can be added.

Sometimes machines with incompatible executables use the same binary data representation. PVM takes advantage of this to avoid data conversion. Architecture names are mapped to data encoding numbers, and the encoding numbers are used to determine when it is necessary to convert.