Abbreviated ABI. A specification that aims to ensure binary compatibility between applications running on the same family of processors or CPUs using Unix System V Release 4.
Applications developed using ABI can run on hardware from different manufacturers without being recompiled; any system calls needed for specific hardware are maintained in libraries.
The specification was originally developed by AT&T and Sun Microsystems and includes a test and verification suite used to determine if a system complies with the standard.
See also application programming interface.