Assembly Glossary

Browse 6 assembly terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

6 Assembly Terms

Low-Level Programming
Programming that operates close to the hardware abstraction layer — using languages like C, Rust, or assembly — where the developer manages memory, interacts...
Machine Instruction
A single binary-encoded operation that a CPU can execute directly, consisting of an opcode and zero or more operands. Each instruction set architecture (x86,...
Mnemonic
A human-readable abbreviation for a machine instruction in assembly language — like MOV, ADD, JMP — making raw CPU operations easier to read and write than raw...
Opcode
Operation code — the numeric portion of a machine language instruction that specifies the operation to perform, such as addition, memory load, or jump.
Program Counter
A CPU register that holds the memory address of the next instruction to be executed. After each instruction fetch, the program counter is automatically...
X86
A family of complex instruction set (CISC) processor architectures originating from the Intel 8086, encompassing 32-bit (IA-32) and 64-bit (x86-64/AMD64)...

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