The registers inside the CPU, the machine code instruction set, and the ways in which the instructions interact with the registers and status flags are all intertwined. As you may recall, one of my ...

The native language of the computer. In order for a program to run, it must be presented to the computer as binary-coded machine instructions that are specific to that CPU family. Although programmers ...

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 ...

If you are limiting yourself to only 16 instructions, which ones should you chose, and how do you manage without the ones that fall by the wayside? In my previous column on our project to build a ...

Long before electricity was a common household utility, humanity had been building machines to do many tasks that we’d now just strap a motor or set of batteries onto and think nothing of it.

There’s always some debate around what style of architecture is best for certain computing applications, with some on the RISC side citing performance per watt and some on the CISC side citing ...

Humans had to carry out all their machining processes by hand for centuries. Even precision tools had to be maneuvered very carefully, inch by inch, by people holding the devices personally. That all ...