A technique for implementing
virtual machine
interpreters, introduced by J.R. Bell in 1973, where each
op-code in the virtual machine
instruction set is the
address of some (lower level) code to perform the required
operation. This kind of virtual machine can be implemented
efficiently in
machine code on most processors by simply
performing an indirect jump to the address which is the next
instruction.
Many
Forth implementations use threaded code and nowadays
some use the term "threading" for almost any technique used to
implement Forth's virtual machine.
http://complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/threaded-code.html.
["James R. Bell", "Threaded Code", CACM, 1973, 16, 6, pp
370-372].
["An Architectural Trail to Threaded Code Systems", Kogge,
P. M., IEEE Computer, March 1982].