Instructions
Language of the Computer
Abstract
This chapter describes instructions, the language of the computer. It explains the two principles of the stored-program computer: the use of instructions that are indistinguishable from numbers and the use of alterable memory for programs. The “instruction set architecture” (ISA) is an abstract interface between the hardware and the lowest-level software that encompasses all the information necessary to write a machine language program that will run correctly. Above this machine level is assembly language, a language that humans can read. The assembler translates the language into the binary numbers that machines can understand, and it even “extends” the instruction set by creating symbolic ...
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