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In computer programming, machine code is computer code consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). For conventional binary computers , machine code is the binary representation of a computer program which is actually read and interpreted by the computer.
A single "complex" instruction does something that may take many instructions on other computers. Such instructions are typified by instructions that take multiple steps, control multiple functional units, or otherwise appear on a larger scale than the bulk of simple instructions implemented by the given processor. Some examples of "complex ...
The instruction cycle (also known as the fetch–decode–execute cycle, or simply the fetch–execute cycle) is the cycle that the central processing unit (CPU) follows from boot-up until the computer has shut down in order to process instructions. It is composed of three main stages: the fetch stage, the decode stage, and the execute stage.
The first documented computer architecture was in the correspondence between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, describing the analytical engine.While building the computer Z1 in 1936, Konrad Zuse described in two patent applications for his future projects that machine instructions could be stored in the same storage used for data, i.e., the stored-program concept.
Execution in computer and software engineering is the process by which a computer or virtual machine interprets and acts on the instructions of a computer program.Each instruction of a program is a description of a particular action which must be carried out, in order for a specific problem to be solved.
The types of operations may include arithmetic, data copying, logical operations, and program control, as well as special instructions (e.g., CPUID). [ 10 ] In addition to the opcode, many instructions also specify the data (known as operands ) the operation will act upon, although some instructions may have implicit operands or none at all. [ 10 ]
Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It involves designing and implementing algorithms , step-by-step specifications of procedures, by writing code in one or more programming languages .
A computer program is a sequence or set [a] of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. It is one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. [1] A computer program in its human-readable form is called source code.