The 32000 processor, although allowing absolute addressing, features generalized addressing modes available in almost all instructions two's-complement offsets can be used in three different sizes - 7, 14, or 30 bits long - as needed. Because these offsets could refer to areas not yet defined, and the length of the code varies with the offset, three passes are necessary. The first pass gets a coarse value of all symbols, the second pass then makes the variable offsets the right length and corrects the symbol values, and the third pass actually generates the code. After the first pass, the symbol table is sorted; then in the second and third passes, a binary search is used to find entries more quickly.
