(VLIW) Used to describe an assembly language instruction set implemented using horizontal microcode. A horizontally encoded instruction word which encodes four or more operations might be considered "very long".
VLIW architectures are sometimes classified as a type of static superscalar architecture. They are static in the sense that which units operate in parallel is determined by the instruction rather than by dynamic scheduling at run-time.
Producing code for VLIW machines is difficult; trace scheduling is a helpful compiler technique.
The most famous VLIW machine was built by (the late) Multiflow Computer, Inc.
(11 Nov 1994)