The microcontroller’s CPU reads program code from memory, one instruction at a time, decodes each instruction, and then executes it. All memory content—both program code and data—is in binary form: ...

A programming language that is one step away from machine language. Each assembly language statement is translated into a machine instruction by the assembler. Programmers must be well versed in the ...

A directive in the native binary language of the hardware platform it is running in. The anatomy of a machine instruction is an operation code (op code) followed by one or more operand nouns. The op ...

First, architecture basics are detailed with information on the register sets, data types, and memory and instruction formats. Next, instruction set extensions are detailed, which include Intel® ...

Few distinctions in computer technology are as clear as the one between hardware and software. But it was not always so. The term software first appeared in 1958, more than 10 years after the ...