Machine Language
Machine language is built up from discrete statements or instructions. On the processing architecture, a given instruction may specify:
- Particular registers for arithmetic, addressing, or control functions
- Particular memory locations or offsets
- Particular addressing modes used to interpret the operands
More complex operations are built up by combining these simple instructions, which (in a von Neumann architecture) are executed sequentially, or as otherwise directed by control flow instructions.
Read more about this topic: Instruction Set
Famous quotes containing the words machine and/or language:
“The machine invades me all day.”
—Sharon Atkins, U.S. receptionist. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“The language of the younger generation ... has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.”
—Elizabeth Hardwick (b. 1916)