Jonathan C.
New Member
Greetings. I understand most of you have no training in Computer Science, but this is where I illuminate the topic of CPUs for you. I'm restless so - I'm doing this.
First things first - what is the nature of the CPU? It execute programs. It has a built-in language, which accesses its ability to execute instructions and move data. That's Assembler Language. It varies in complexity. Each corporation which builds its CPU includes its own language for that CPU. For instance Intel's x86 architecture, which has over 500+ instructions including SSE1-4 and MMX. IBM/Motorola/Apple's PowerPC architecture, an entirely different set of instructions. MIPS Technologies' MIPS instruction set, which has an entirely different language, and so forth. They are incompatible.
There are several classes of instruction. Moving data, from registers to cache, or from those to main memory. Calculations - for instance addition, multiplication, division, and bit-wise operations on the binary (1's and 0's) data, which are XOR, OR, AND, and NOT. Logical operations, for instance IF/ELSE and boolean operations. And finally, instructions which change other instructions - which Intel has plenty of.
Using these above operations - it is possible to make the computer do just about anything. Now - this is very difficult, using this assembler language entirely, thus most CPUs use higher order programming languages, which are able to make the task of programming far easier. Languages such as C, Fortran, C++, and Pascal are some such programs. A grammar/context-free grammar is the traditional term used for them. Tokens and parse-trees are other traditional terms - but I never did finish Principle of Programming Languages
That's CS 314.
And that's about all anyone can really learn in one sitting. It'll doubtlessly do little good here - but the reverberations may do some good.
First things first - what is the nature of the CPU? It execute programs. It has a built-in language, which accesses its ability to execute instructions and move data. That's Assembler Language. It varies in complexity. Each corporation which builds its CPU includes its own language for that CPU. For instance Intel's x86 architecture, which has over 500+ instructions including SSE1-4 and MMX. IBM/Motorola/Apple's PowerPC architecture, an entirely different set of instructions. MIPS Technologies' MIPS instruction set, which has an entirely different language, and so forth. They are incompatible.
There are several classes of instruction. Moving data, from registers to cache, or from those to main memory. Calculations - for instance addition, multiplication, division, and bit-wise operations on the binary (1's and 0's) data, which are XOR, OR, AND, and NOT. Logical operations, for instance IF/ELSE and boolean operations. And finally, instructions which change other instructions - which Intel has plenty of.
Using these above operations - it is possible to make the computer do just about anything. Now - this is very difficult, using this assembler language entirely, thus most CPUs use higher order programming languages, which are able to make the task of programming far easier. Languages such as C, Fortran, C++, and Pascal are some such programs. A grammar/context-free grammar is the traditional term used for them. Tokens and parse-trees are other traditional terms - but I never did finish Principle of Programming Languages
That's CS 314. And that's about all anyone can really learn in one sitting. It'll doubtlessly do little good here - but the reverberations may do some good.
