1.6 An Introduction to the Intel 80x86 CPU Family

Thus far, you've seen a couple of HLA programs that will actually compile and run. However, all the statements appearing in programs to this point have been either data declarations or calls to HLA Standard Library routines. There hasn't been any real assembly language. Before we can progress any further and learn some real assembly language, a detour is necessary; unless you understand the basic structure of the Intel 80x86 CPU family, the machine instructions will make little sense.

The Intel CPU family is generally classified as a Von Neumann Architecture Machine. Von Neumann computer systems contain three main building blocks: the central processing unit (CPU), memory, and input/output (I/0) ...

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