Computer Organization & Architecture · topic
Instruction formats and field widths, counting instructions with expanding opcodes, zero- to three-address code, instruction types, RISC versus CISC, condition flags, byte ordering and alignment, and every addressing mode with its effective-address rule, memory-reference count and typical use.
A machine instruction is a bit pattern that the processor decodes and executes: it names an operation (the opcode) and the operands the operation uses. The instruction set architecture (ISA) is the full list of instructions, their formats, the registers and the memory model a programmer can rely on.
An addressing mode is the rule that turns the operand field of an instruction into the operand itself. Most modes first compute an effective address (EA), the memory address where the operand lives, and then read or write that location.
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