Skyrim Mod talk:Mod File Format/VMAD Field

VMAD

Anyone wonders what VMAD stands for? Here's what I googled from a paper Jimborean A., Herrmann M., Loechner V., Clauss P.: "VMAD: a Virtual Machine for Advanced Dynamic Analysis of Programs", 2010

'Abstract: VMAD (Virtual Machine for Advanced Dynamic analysis), enabling an efficient implementation of advanced profiling and analysis processes. VMAD is organized as a sequence of basic operations where external modules associated to specific profiling strategies are dynamically loaded when required. The program binary files handled by VMAD are previously instrumented at compile time to include necessary data, instrumentation instructions and callbacks to the VM. Dynamic information, such as memory locations of launched modules, are patched at startup in the binary file. The LLVM compiler (written in C++) has been extended to automatically instrument programs according to both VMAD and the handled profiling strategies. VMAD's potential is illustrated by presenting a profiling strategy dedicated to loop nests. It collects all memory addresses that are accessed during a selected number of successive iterations of each loop. The collected addresses are consumed by an analysis process trying to interpolate addresses successively accessed through each memory reference as a linear function of some "virtual" loop indices. This profiling strategy using VMAD has been tested on the SPEC2006 benchmark suite showing a very low time overhead.'

The paper touches on a few esoteric points beyond the reach of most of us, but sheds some light on what kind of engine is driving TES5. Lmstearn (talk) 12:17, 22 November 2013 (GMT)

Unfortunately, that's probably a coincidental use of the initialism. Program profiling and analysis would not be key components of a game, though they would likely be part of it's design prior to release. There's no evidence that this is linked to Papyrus code in any way. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 02:55, 25 November 2013 (GMT)

Yes, the above paper stresses that VMAD addresses the SPEC2006 criteria, whereas the Creation engine would be looking more at SPEC MPI2007 benchmarks. VM is Virtual Machine for sure, as in "VM is frozen", but AD: Active Data? No doubt, the secret of the VMAD acronym will remain locked in Bethesda's vaults for sometime to come.--Lmstearn (talk) 03:42, 25 November 2013 (GMT)

Googling skyrim "vmad" "virtual machine", I saw several references to "Virtual Machine Adapter", but many of them came from the same program, and it's entirely possible that the creator of the program just decided that's what it meant and others picked up on it. Of course, these being programmers, it's entirely possible that most of the scripting was done by four people who decided to each use their first initials for the field name (e.g., Victor, Mary, Anne, David). :Þ – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 07:26, 25 November 2013 (GMT)

From "redactedname" on the Wrye Bash Nexus page:

VMAD (Virtual Machine Adapter) = subgroup responsible for scripts attached to records.

Shall we take that as gospel?--Lmstearn (talk) 08:41, 26 November 2013 (GMT)

Not unless he/she works for Bethesda. Otherwise, it's probably the same thing everyone else is assuming it means, and we don't know where that came from. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 09:59, 26 November 2013 (GMT)

Final try: ElminsterAU's august program TES5edit has the records as described above. Hey, its only another mod, but might he know something we don't?--Lmstearn (talk) 12:47, 27 November 2013 (GMT)

He might, but then again, he might not. It certainly sounds like a reasonable initialism, but unless it's mentioned in a Bethesda-related document somewhere, we can't know for sure. In the end, it's not really a big deal...most of the file format pages take guesses at things, including record and field names. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 18:45, 27 November 2013 (GMT)