[noh-vuh] 
[-vee] . Astronomy. | a star that suddenly becomes thousands of times brighter and then gradually fades to its original intensity. |
[noh-vuh] | 1. | Also called Nova Salmon. a Pacific salmon cured in the style of Nova Scotia salmon. |
| 2. | (lowercase ) (loosely) any smoked salmon. |
| no·va (nō'və) n. pl. no·vae (-vē) or no·vas A star that suddenly becomes much brighter and then gradually returns to its original brightness over a period of weeks to years. [New Latin (stēlla) nova, new (star), nova, feminine of Latin novus, new; see newo- in Indo-European roots.] |
| nova (nō'və) Pronunciation Key
Plural novae (nō'vē) or novas A white dwarf star that suddenly and temporarily becomes extremely bright as a result of the explosion at its surface of material accreted from an expanding companion star. The material, mostly hydrogen and helium, is attracted by the white dwarf's gravity and accumulates under growing pressure and heat until nuclear fusion is ignited. Unlike a supernova, a nova is not blown apart by the explosion and gradually returns to its original brightness over a period of weeks to years. Because of their sudden appearance where no star had been previously visible, novae were long thought to be new stars. Since 1925, novae have been classified as variable stars. Compare supernova. |
Nova processor
A minicomputer(?) introduced by Data General in 1969, with four 16-bit accumulators, AC0 to AC3, and a 15-bit program counter. A later model also had a 15-bit stack pointer and frame pointer. AC2 and AC3 could be used for indexed addressing and AC3 was used to store the return address on a subroutine call. Apart from the small register set, the NOVA was an ordinary CPU design.
Memory could be accessed indirectly through addresses stored in other memory locations. If locations 0 to 3 were used for this purpose, they were auto-incremented after being used. If locations 4 to 7 were used, they were auto-decremented. Memory could be addressed in 16-bit words up to a maximum of 32K words (64K bytes). The instruction cycle time was 500 nanoseconds(?). The Nova originally used core memory, then later dynamic RAM.
Like the PDP-8, the Data General Nova was also copied, not just in one, but two implementations - the Data General MN601 and Fairchild 9440. Luckily, the NOVA was a more mature design than the PDP-8.
Another CPU, the PACE, was based on the NOVA design, but featured 16-bit addresses (instead of the Nova's 15), more addressing modes, and a 10-level stack (like the Intel 8008).
[Speed, mini?]
(2003-10-23)
| NOVA Nurses Organization of Veterans Affairs |