Very long instruction word
In contrast, one VLIW instruction encodes multiple operations; specifically, one instruction encodes at least one operation for each execution unit of the device. For example, if a VLIW device has five execution units, then a VLIW instruction for that device would have five operation fields, each field specifying what operation should be done on that corresponding execution unit. In order to find a space for these operation fields, VLIW instructions are usually at least 64-bits in width and on some architectures 128-bits or wider; this is how the name comes.