Misplaced Pages

#60939

76-553: A12X: 7 core GPU The Apple A12X Bionic is a 64-bit system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc. , part of the Apple silicon series, It first appeared in the iPad Pro (3rd generation) , announced on October 30, 2018. The A12X is an 8-core variant of the A12 (four big cores, four small cores) and Apple states that it has 35 percent faster single-core CPU performance and 90 percent faster overall CPU performance than its predecessor,

152-409: A 32-bit to a 64-bit architecture is a fundamental alteration, as most operating systems must be extensively modified to take advantage of the new architecture, because that software has to manage the actual memory addressing hardware. Other software must also be ported to use the new abilities; older 32-bit software may be supported either by virtue of the 64-bit instruction set being a superset of

228-492: A code obfuscation technique as a measure against disassembly and tampering. The principle is also used in shared code sequences of fat binaries which must run on multiple instruction-set-incompatible processor platforms. This property is also used to find unintended instructions called gadgets in existing code repositories and is used in return-oriented programming as alternative to code injection for exploits such as return-to-libc attacks . In some computers,

304-613: A virtual machine of a 16- or 32-bit operating system to run 16-bit applications or use one of the alternatives for NTVDM . Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" had only a 32-bit kernel, but they can run 64-bit user-mode code on 64-bit processors. Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" had both 32- and 64-bit kernels, and, on most Macs, used the 32-bit kernel even on 64-bit processors. This allowed those Macs to support 64-bit processes while still supporting 32-bit device drivers; although not 64-bit drivers and performance advantages that can come with them. Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" ran with

380-459: A "next-generation Neural Engine". This neural network hardware, which is the same as found in the A12 , can perform up to 5 trillion operations per second. The A12X and A12Z are manufactured by TSMC using a 7 nm FinFET process, and it contains 10 billion transistors vs. the 6.9 billion on the A12. The A12X is paired with 4 GB of LPDDR4X memory in the third-generation 12.9" iPad Pro and

456-725: A 16  MiB ( 16 × 1024 bytes ) address space. 32-bit superminicomputers , such as the DEC VAX , became common in the 1970s, and 32-bit microprocessors, such as the Motorola 68000 family and the 32-bit members of the x86 family starting with the Intel 80386 , appeared in the mid-1980s, making 32 bits something of a de facto consensus as a convenient register size. A 32-bit address register meant that 2 addresses, or 4  GB of random-access memory (RAM), could be referenced. When these architectures were devised, 4 GB of memory

532-423: A 32- or 64-bit Java virtual machine with no modification. The lengths and precision of all the built-in types, such as char , short , int , long , float , and double , and the types that can be used as array indices, are specified by the standard and are not dependent on the underlying architecture. Java programs that run on a 64-bit Java virtual machine have access to a larger address space. Speed

608-609: A 64-bit kernel on more Macs, and OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" and later macOS releases only have a 64-bit kernel. On systems with 64-bit processors, both the 32- and 64-bit macOS kernels can run 32-bit user-mode code, and all versions of macOS up to macOS Mojave (10.14) include 32-bit versions of libraries that 32-bit applications would use, so 32-bit user-mode software for macOS will run on those systems. The 32-bit versions of libraries have been removed by Apple in macOS Catalina (10.15). Linux and most other Unix-like operating systems, and

684-416: A direct map between the numerical machine code and a human-readable mnemonic. In assembly, numerical opcodes and operands are replaced with mnemonics and labels. For example, the x86 architecture has available the 0x90 opcode; it is represented as NOP in the assembly source code . While it is possible to write programs directly in machine code, managing individual bits and calculating numerical addresses

760-780: A driver for a 32-bit PCI device asking the device to DMA data into upper areas of a 64-bit machine's memory could not satisfy requests from the operating system to load data from the device to memory above the 4 gigabyte barrier, because the pointers for those addresses would not fit into the DMA registers of the device. This problem is solved by having the OS take the memory restrictions of the device into account when generating requests to drivers for DMA, or by using an input–output memory management unit (IOMMU). As of August 2023 , 64-bit architectures for which processors are being manufactured include: Most architectures of 64 bits that are derived from

836-449: A generation of computers in which 64-bit processors are the norm. 64 bits is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory, and CPUs and, by extension, the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have been used in supercomputers since the 1970s ( Cray-1 , 1975) and in reduced instruction set computers (RISC) based workstations and servers since the early 1990s. In 2003, 64-bit CPUs were introduced to

SECTION 10

#1732790132061

912-484: A given process and can have implications for efficient processor cache use. Maintaining a partial 32-bit model is one way to handle this, and is in general reasonably effective. For example, the z/OS operating system takes this approach, requiring program code to reside in 31-bit address spaces (the high order bit is not used in address calculation on the underlying hardware platform) while data objects can optionally reside in 64-bit regions. Not all such applications require

988-751: A large address space or manipulate 64-bit data items, so these applications do not benefit from these features. x86-based 64-bit systems sometimes lack equivalents of software that is written for 32-bit architectures. The most severe problem in Microsoft Windows is incompatible device drivers for obsolete hardware. Most 32-bit application software can run on a 64-bit operating system in a compatibility mode , also termed an emulation mode, e.g., Microsoft WoW64 Technology for IA-64 and AMD64. The 64-bit Windows Native Mode driver environment runs atop 64-bit NTDLL.DLL , which cannot call 32-bit Win32 subsystem code (often devices whose actual hardware function

1064-486: A machine with a single accumulator , the accumulator is implicitly both the left operand and result of most arithmetic instructions. Some other architectures, such as the x86 architecture, have accumulator versions of common instructions, with the accumulator regarded as one of the general registers by longer instructions. A stack machine has most or all of its operands on an implicit stack. Special purpose instructions also often lack explicit operands; for example, CPUID in

1140-433: A one-to-one mapping to machine code. The assembly language decoding method is called disassembly . Machine code may be decoded back to its corresponding high-level language under two conditions: The first condition is to accept an obfuscated reading of the source code. An obfuscated version of source code is displayed if the machine code is sent to a decompiler of the source language. The second condition requires

1216-400: A paging based system, if the current page actually holds machine code by an execute bit — pages have multiple such permission bits (readable, writable, etc.) for various housekeeping functionality. E.g. on Unix-like systems memory pages can be toggled to be executable with the mprotect() system call, and on Windows, VirtualProtect() can be used to achieve a similar result. If an attempt

1292-521: A problem. 64-bit drivers were not provided for many older devices, which could consequently not be used in 64-bit systems. Driver compatibility was less of a problem with open-source drivers, as 32-bit ones could be modified for 64-bit use. Support for hardware made before early 2007, was problematic for open-source platforms, due to the relatively small number of users. 64-bit versions of Windows cannot run 16-bit software . However, most 32-bit applications will work well. 64-bit users are forced to install

1368-413: A processor with 64-bit memory addresses can directly access 2 bytes (16 exabytes or EB) of byte-addressable memory. With no further qualification, a 64-bit computer architecture generally has integer and addressing registers that are 64 bits wide, allowing direct support for 64-bit data types and addresses. However, a CPU might have external data buses or address buses with different sizes from

1444-405: A single integer register can store the memory address to any location in the computer's physical or virtual memory . Therefore, the total number of addresses to memory is often determined by the width of these registers. The IBM System/360 of the 1960s was an early 32-bit computer; it had 32-bit integer registers, although it only used the low order 24 bits of a word for addresses, resulting in

1520-444: A tag and a Y field. In addition to transfer (branch) instructions, these machines have skip instruction that conditionally skip one or two words, e.g., Compare Accumulator with Storage (CAS) does a three way compare and conditionally skips to NSI, NSI+1 or NSI+2, depending on the result. The MIPS architecture provides a specific example for a machine code whose instructions are always 32 bits long. The general type of instruction

1596-522: Is an abbreviation of "Long, Pointer, 64". Other models are the ILP64 data model in which all three data types are 64 bits wide, and even the SILP64 model where short integers are also 64 bits wide. However, in most cases the modifications required are relatively minor and straightforward, and many well-written programs can simply be recompiled for the new environment with no changes. Another alternative

SECTION 20

#1732790132061

1672-483: Is emulated in user mode software, like Winprinters). Because 64-bit drivers for most devices were unavailable until early 2007 (Vista x64), using a 64-bit version of Windows was considered a challenge. However, the trend has since moved toward 64-bit computing, more so as memory prices dropped and the use of more than 4 GB of RAM increased. Most manufacturers started to provide both 32-bit and 64-bit drivers for new devices, so unavailability of 64-bit drivers ceased to be

1748-477: Is generally different from bytecode (also known as p-code), which is either executed by an interpreter or itself compiled into machine code for faster (direct) execution. An exception is when a processor is designed to use a particular bytecode directly as its machine code, such as is the case with Java processors . Machine code and assembly code are sometimes called native code when referring to platform-dependent parts of language features or libraries. From

1824-449: Is given by the op (operation) field, the highest 6 bits. J-type (jump) and I-type (immediate) instructions are fully specified by op . R-type (register) instructions include an additional field funct to determine the exact operation. The fields used in these types are: rs , rt , and rd indicate register operands; shamt gives a shift amount; and the address or immediate fields contain an operand directly. For example, adding

1900-428: Is made to execute machine code on a non-executable page, an architecture specific fault will typically occur. Treating data as machine code , or finding new ways to use existing machine code, by various techniques, is the basis of some security vulnerabilities. Similarly, in a segment based system, segment descriptors can indicate whether a segment can contain executable code and in what rings that code can run. From

1976-413: Is not the only factor to consider in comparing 32-bit and 64-bit processors. Applications such as multi-tasking, stress testing, and clustering – for high-performance computing (HPC) – may be more suited to a 64-bit architecture when deployed appropriately. For this reason, 64-bit clusters have been widely deployed in large organizations, such as IBM, HP, and Microsoft. Summary: A common misconception

2052-441: Is often written with implicit assumptions about the widths of data types. C code should prefer ( u ) intptr_t instead of long when casting pointers into integer objects. A programming model is a choice made to suit a given compiler, and several can coexist on the same OS. However, the programming model chosen as the primary model for the OS application programming interface (API) typically dominates. Another consideration

2128-504: Is often, but not always, based on 64-bit units of data. For example, although the x86 / x87 architecture has instructions able to load and store 64-bit (and 32-bit) floating-point values in memory, the internal floating-point data and register format is 80 bits wide, while the general-purpose registers are 32 bits wide. In contrast, the 64-bit Alpha family uses a 64-bit floating-point data and register format, and 64-bit integer registers. Many computer instruction sets are designed so that

2204-425: Is rarely a problem. Systems may also differ in other details, such as memory arrangement, operating systems, or peripheral devices . Because a program normally relies on such factors, different systems will typically not run the same machine code, even when the same type of processor is used. A processor's instruction set may have fixed-length or variable-length instructions. How the patterns are organized varies with

2280-470: Is running on an existing iPad chip that we don’t intend to put in a Mac in the future – it’s just there for the transition – the Mac runs awfully nice on that system. It’s not a basis on which to judge future Macs ... but it gives you a sense of what our silicon team can do when they’re not even trying – and they’re going to be trying.” 64-bit computing From the software perspective, 64-bit computing means

2356-512: Is tedious and error-prone. Therefore, programs are rarely written directly in machine code. However, an existing machine code program may be edited if the assembly source code is not available. The majority of programs today are written in a high-level language . A high-level program may be translated into machine code by a compiler . Every processor or processor family has its own instruction set . Instructions are patterns of bits , digits, or characters that correspond to machine commands. Thus,

Apple A12X - Misplaced Pages Continue

2432-418: Is that 64-bit architectures are no better than 32-bit architectures unless the computer has more than 4 GB of random-access memory . This is not entirely true: The main disadvantage of 64-bit architectures is that, relative to 32-bit architectures, the same data occupies more space in memory (due to longer pointers and possibly other types, and alignment padding). This increases the memory requirements of

2508-495: Is the IBM AS/400 , software for which is compiled into a virtual instruction set architecture (ISA) called Technology Independent Machine Interface (TIMI); TIMI code is then translated to native machine code by low-level software before being executed. The translation software is all that must be rewritten to move the full OS and all software to a new platform, as when IBM transitioned the native instruction set for AS/400 from

2584-507: Is the LLP64 model, which maintains compatibility with 32-bit code by leaving both int and long as 32-bit. LL refers to the long long integer type, which is at least 64 bits on all platforms, including 32-bit environments. There are also systems with 64-bit processors using an ILP32 data model, with the addition of 64-bit long long integers; this is also used on many platforms with 32-bit processors. This model reduces code size and

2660-561: Is the binary representation of a computer program which is actually read and interpreted by the computer. A program in machine code consists of a sequence of machine instructions (possibly interspersed with data). Each machine code instruction causes the CPU to perform a specific task. Examples of such tasks include: In general, each architecture family (e.g., x86 , ARM ) has its own instruction set architecture (ISA), and hence its own specific machine code language. There are exceptions, such as

2736-400: Is the data model used for device drivers . Drivers make up the majority of the operating system code in most modern operating systems (although many may not be loaded when the operating system is running). Many drivers use pointers heavily to manipulate data, and in some cases have to load pointers of a certain size into the hardware they support for direct memory access (DMA). As an example,

2812-419: Is typically set to a hard coded value when the CPU is first powered on, and will hence execute whatever machine code happens to be at this address. Similarly, the program counter can be set to execute whatever machine code is at some arbitrary address, even if this is not valid machine code. This will typically trigger an architecture specific protection fault. The CPU is oftentimes told, by page permissions in

2888-555: The Apple A10X . The Apple A12Z Bionic is an updated version of the A12X, adding an additional GPU core, and was unveiled on March 18, 2020, as part of the iPad Pro (4th generation) . The A12X and A12Z feature an Apple-designed 64-bit ARMv8.3-A octa-core CPU, with four high-performance cores called Vortex and four energy-efficient cores called Tempest . The Vortex cores are a 7-wide decode out-of-order superscalar design, while

2964-649: The Apple Watch Series 4 and 5. Many 64-bit platforms today use an LP64 model (including Solaris, AIX , HP-UX , Linux, macOS, BSD, and IBM z/OS). Microsoft Windows uses an LLP64 model. The disadvantage of the LP64 model is that storing a long into an int truncates. On the other hand, converting a pointer to a long will "work" in LP64. In the LLP64 model, the reverse is true. These are not problems which affect fully standard-compliant code, but code

3040-513: The C and C++ toolchains for them, have supported 64-bit processors for many years. Many applications and libraries for those platforms are open-source software , written in C and C++, so that if they are 64-bit-safe, they can be compiled into 64-bit versions. This source-based distribution model, with an emphasis on frequent releases, makes availability of application software for those operating systems less of an issue. In 32-bit programs, pointers and data types such as integers generally have

3116-464: The Cray-1 , used registers up to 64 bits wide, and supported 64-bit integer arithmetic, although they did not support 64-bit addressing. In the mid-1980s, Intel i860 development began culminating in a 1989 release; the i860 had 32-bit integer registers and 32-bit addressing, so it was not a fully 64-bit processor, although its graphics unit supported 64-bit integer arithmetic. However, 32 bits remained

Apple A12X - Misplaced Pages Continue

3192-720: The Developer Transition Kit (2020) , which uses the A12Z processor with 16 GB RAM in a Mac mini enclosure, hence being the first Macintosh computer to use the Apple silicon architecture. The A12Z would be used as the basis for the design of the M1 , Apple's first in-house processor designed for use in Mac computers. In an interview shortly after the introduction of the DTK (2020), Apple's SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi commented: “Even that DTK hardware, which

3268-539: The Kruskal count , sometimes possible through opcode-level programming to deliberately arrange the resulting code so that two code paths share a common fragment of opcode sequences. These are called overlapping instructions , overlapping opcodes , overlapping code , overlapped code , instruction scission , or jump into the middle of an instruction . In the 1970s and 1980s, overlapping instructions were sometimes used to preserve memory space. One example were in

3344-912: The Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation 2 had 64-bit microprocessors before their introduction in personal computers. High-end printers, network equipment, and industrial computers also used 64-bit microprocessors, such as the Quantum Effect Devices R5000 . 64-bit computing started to trickle down to the personal computer desktop from 2003 onward, when some models in Apple 's Macintosh lines switched to PowerPC 970 processors (termed G5 by Apple), and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) released its first 64-bit x86-64 processor. Physical memory eventually caught up with 32 bit limits. In 2023, laptop computers were commonly equipped with 16GB and servers up to 64 GB of memory, greatly exceeding

3420-698: The VAX architecture, which includes optional support of the PDP-11 instruction set; the IA-64 architecture, which includes optional support of the IA-32 instruction set; and the PowerPC 615 microprocessor, which can natively process both PowerPC and x86 instruction sets. Machine code is a strictly numerical language, and it is the lowest-level interface to the CPU intended for a programmer. Assembly language  provides

3496-599: The Zilog Z80 processor, the machine code 00000101 , which causes the CPU to decrement the B general-purpose register , would be represented in assembly language as DEC B . The IBM 704, 709, 704x and 709x store one instruction in each instruction word; IBM numbers the bit from the left as S, 1, ..., 35. Most instructions have one of two formats: For all but the IBM 7094 and 7094 II, there are three index registers designated A, B and C; indexing with multiple 1 bits in

3572-521: The 32-bit instruction set, so that processors that support the 64-bit instruction set can also run code for the 32-bit instruction set, or through software emulation , or by the actual implementation of a 32-bit processor core within the 64-bit processor, as with some Itanium processors from Intel, which included an IA-32 processor core to run 32-bit x86 applications. The operating systems for those 64-bit architectures generally support both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. One significant exception to this

3648-833: The 32-bit limit of 4 GB ( 4 × 1024 bytes ), allowing room for later expansion and incurring no overhead of translating full 64-bit addresses. The Power ISA v3.0 allows 64 bits for an effective address, mapped to a segmented address with between 65 and 78 bits allowed, for virtual memory, and, for any given processor, up to 60 bits for physical memory. The Oracle SPARC Architecture 2015 allows 64 bits for virtual memory and, for any given processor, between 40 and 56 bits for physical memory. The ARM AArch64 Virtual Memory System Architecture allows 48 bits for virtual memory and, for any given processor, from 32 to 48 bits for physical memory. The DEC Alpha specification requires minimum of 43 bits of virtual memory address space (8 TB) to be supported, and hardware need to check and trap if

3724-655: The 4 GB address capacity of 32 bits. In principle, a 64-bit microprocessor can address 16 EB ( 16 × 1024 = 2 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes ) of memory. However, not all instruction sets, and not all processors implementing those instruction sets, support a full 64-bit virtual or physical address space. The x86-64 architecture (as of 2016 ) allows 48 bits for virtual memory and, for any given processor, up to 52 bits for physical memory. These limits allow memory sizes of 256  TB ( 256 × 1024 bytes ) and 4  PB ( 4 × 1024 bytes ), respectively. A PC cannot currently contain 4  petabytes of memory (due to

3800-452: The A12X, enabling better performance in 4K video editing, rendering, and augmented reality . Embedded in the A12X and A12Z is the M12 motion coprocessor . The A12Z additionally features tuned performance controllers and a better thermal architecture compared to the A12X, which potentially allows for higher clock speeds. The A12X and A12Z include dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls

3876-593: The Tempest cores are a 3-wide decode out-of-order superscalar design. The Tempest cores are based on Apple's Swift cores from the Apple A6 , and are similar in performance to ARM Cortex-A73 CPU cores. It is Apple's first SoC with an octa core CPU. The A12X integrates an Apple-designed 7-core graphics processing unit (GPU), with twice the graphics performance of the A10X. The A12Z has an 8-core GPU, one more core than

SECTION 50

#1732790132061

3952-422: The first-generation 11" iPad Pro, or 6 GB in the 1 TB storage configurations. The A12Z is paired with 6 GB of LPDDR4X RAM in the fourth-generation 12.9" iPad Pro and the second-generation 11" iPad Pro. The A12X has video codec encoding support for HEVC and H.264 . It has decoding support for HEVC, H.264, MPEG‑4 , and Motion JPEG . At its 2020 Worldwide Developer's Conference , Apple introduced

4028-469: The implementation of error tables in Microsoft 's Altair BASIC , where interleaved instructions mutually shared their instruction bytes. The technique is rarely used today, but might still be necessary to resort to in areas where extreme optimization for size is necessary on byte-level such as in the implementation of boot loaders which have to fit into boot sectors . It is also sometimes used as

4104-511: The instruction set is specific to a class of processors using (mostly) the same architecture . Successor or derivative processor designs often include instructions of a predecessor and may add new additional instructions. Occasionally, a successor design will discontinue or alter the meaning of some instruction code (typically because it is needed for new purposes), affecting code compatibility to some extent; even compatible processors may show slightly different behavior for some instructions, but this

4180-526: The machine code of the architecture is implemented by an even more fundamental underlying layer called microcode , providing a common machine language interface across a line or family of different models of computer with widely different underlying dataflows . This is done to facilitate porting of machine language programs between different models. An example of this use is the IBM System/360 family of computers and their successors. Machine code

4256-631: The mainstream PC market in the form of x86-64 processors and the PowerPC G5 . A 64-bit register can hold any of 2 (over 18 quintillion or 1.8×10 ) different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 64 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (equal to 2 − 1) for representation as an ( unsigned ) binary number , and −9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (−2 ) through 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (2 − 1) for representation as two's complement . Hence,

4332-542: The mid-1990s, HAL Computer Systems , Sun Microsystems , IBM , Silicon Graphics , and Hewlett-Packard had developed 64-bit architectures for their workstation and server systems. A notable exception to this trend were mainframes from IBM, which then used 32-bit data and 31-bit address sizes; the IBM mainframes did not include 64-bit processors until 2000. During the 1990s, several low-cost 64-bit microprocessors were used in consumer electronics and embedded applications. Notably,

4408-409: The norm until the early 1990s, when the continual reductions in the cost of memory led to installations with amounts of RAM approaching 4 GB, and the use of virtual memory spaces exceeding the 4 GB ceiling became desirable for handling certain types of problems. In response, MIPS and DEC developed 64-bit microprocessor architectures, initially for high-end workstation and server machines. By

4484-763: The older 32/48-bit IMPI to the newer 64-bit PowerPC-AS , codenamed Amazon . The IMPI instruction set was quite different from even 32-bit PowerPC, so this transition was even bigger than moving a given instruction set from 32 to 64 bits. On 64-bit hardware with x86-64 architecture (AMD64), most 32-bit operating systems and applications can run with no compatibility issues. While the larger address space of 64-bit architectures makes working with large data sets in applications such as digital video , scientific computing, and large databases easier, there has been considerable debate on whether they or their 32-bit compatibility modes will be faster than comparably priced 32-bit systems for other tasks. A compiled Java program can run on

4560-412: The other four index registers. The effective address is normally Y-C(T), where C(T) is either 0 for a tag of 0, the logical or of the selected index regisrs in multiple tag mode or the selected index register if not in multiple tag mode. However, the effective address for index register control instructions is just Y. A flag with both bits 1 selects indirect addressing; the indirect address word has both

4636-428: The other types of registers cannot. The size of these registers therefore normally limits the amount of directly addressable memory, even if there are registers, such as floating-point registers, that are wider. Most high performance 32-bit and 64-bit processors (some notable exceptions are older or embedded ARM architecture (ARM) and 32-bit MIPS architecture (MIPS) CPUs) have integrated floating point hardware, which

SECTION 60

#1732790132061

4712-529: The particular architecture and type of instruction. Most instructions have one or more opcode fields that specify the basic instruction type (such as arithmetic, logical, jump , etc.), the operation (such as add or compare), and other fields that may give the type of the operand (s), the addressing mode (s), the addressing offset(s) or index, or the operand value itself (such constant operands contained in an instruction are called immediate ). Not all machines or individual instructions have explicit operands. On

4788-420: The physical size of the memory chips), but AMD envisioned large servers, shared memory clusters, and other uses of physical address space that might approach this in the foreseeable future. Thus the 52-bit physical address provides ample room for expansion while not incurring the cost of implementing full 64-bit physical addresses. Similarly, the 48-bit virtual address space was designed to provide 65,536 (2 ) times

4864-657: The point of view of a process , the code space is the part of its address space where the code in execution is stored. In multitasking systems this comprises the program's code segment and usually shared libraries . In multi-threading environment, different threads of one process share code space along with data space, which reduces the overhead of context switching considerably as compared to process switching. Various tools and methods exist to decode machine code back to its corresponding source code . Machine code can easily be decoded back to its corresponding assembly language source code because assembly language forms

4940-504: The point of view of the CPU, machine code is stored in RAM, but is typically also kept in a set of caches for performance reasons. There may be different caches for instructions and data, depending on the architecture. The CPU knows what machine code to execute, based on its internal program counter. The program counter points to a memory address and is changed based on special instructions which may cause programmatic branches. The program counter

5016-412: The registers 1 and 2 and placing the result in register 6 is encoded: Load a value into register 8, taken from the memory cell 68 cells after the location listed in register 3: Jumping to the address 1024: On processor architectures with variable-length instruction sets (such as Intel 's x86 processor family) it is, within the limits of the control-flow resynchronizing phenomenon known as

5092-578: The registers, even larger (the 32-bit Pentium had a 64-bit data bus, for instance). Processor registers are typically divided into several groups: integer , floating-point , single instruction, multiple data (SIMD), control , and often special registers for address arithmetic which may have various uses and names such as address , index , or base registers . However, in modern designs, these functions are often performed by more general purpose integer registers. In most processors, only integer or address-registers can be used to address data in memory;

5168-547: The remaining unsupported bits are zero (to support compatibility on future processors). Alpha 21064 supported 43 bits of virtual memory address space (8 TB) and 34 bits of physical memory address space (16 GB). Alpha 21164 supported 43 bits of virtual memory address space (8 TB) and 40 bits of physical memory address space (1 TB). Alpha 21264 supported user-configurable 43 or 48 bits of virtual memory address space (8 TB or 256 TB) and 44 bits of physical memory address space (16 TB). A change from

5244-416: The result of a constant expression freed up by replacing it by that constant) and other code enhancements. A much more human-friendly rendition of machine language, named assembly language , uses mnemonic codes to refer to machine code instructions, rather than using the instructions' numeric values directly, and uses symbolic names to refer to storage locations and sometimes registers . For example, on

5320-478: The same architecture of 32 bits can execute code written for the 32-bit versions natively, with no performance penalty. This kind of support is commonly called bi-arch support or more generally multi-arch support . Machine code 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

5396-486: The same length. This is not necessarily true on 64-bit machines. Mixing data types in programming languages such as C and its descendants such as C++ and Objective-C may thus work on 32-bit implementations but not on 64-bit implementations. In many programming environments for C and C-derived languages on 64-bit machines, int variables are still 32 bits wide, but long integers and pointers are 64 bits wide. These are described as having an LP64 data model , which

5472-448: The size of data structures containing pointers, at the cost of a much smaller address space, a good choice for some embedded systems. For instruction sets such as x86 and ARM in which the 64-bit version of the instruction set has more registers than does the 32-bit version, it provides access to the additional registers without the space penalty. It is common in 64-bit RISC machines, explored in x86 as x32 ABI , and has recently been used in

5548-443: The tag subtracts the logical or of the selected index registers and loading with multiple 1 bits in the tag loads all of the selected index registers. The 7094 and 7094 II have seven index registers, but when they are powered on they are in multiple tag mode , in which they use only the three of the index registers in a fashion compatible with earlier machines, and require a Leave Multiple Tag Mode ( LMTM ) instruction in order to access

5624-461: The use of machine code with 64-bit virtual memory addresses. However, not all 64-bit instruction sets support full 64-bit virtual memory addresses; x86-64 and AArch64 for example, support only 48 bits of virtual address, with the remaining 16 bits of the virtual address required to be all zeros (000...) or all ones (111...), and several 64-bit instruction sets support fewer than 64 bits of physical memory address. The term 64-bit also describes

5700-406: The x86 architecture writes values into four implicit destination registers. This distinction between explicit and implicit operands is important in code generators, especially in the register allocation and live range tracking parts. A good code optimizer can track implicit and explicit operands which may allow more frequent constant propagation , constant folding of registers (a register assigned

5776-416: Was so far beyond the typical amounts (4 MiB) in installations, that this was considered to be enough headroom for addressing. 4.29 billion addresses were considered an appropriate size to work with for another important reason: 4.29 billion integers are enough to assign unique references to most entities in applications like databases . Some supercomputer architectures of the 1970s and 1980s, such as

#60939