Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Processor register
Summary
A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processor. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-only. In computer architecture, registers are typically addressed by mechanisms other than main memory, but may in some cases be assigned a memory address e.g. DEC PDP-10, ICT 1900.
Almost all computers, whether load/store architecture or not, load items of data from a larger memory into registers where they are used for arithmetic operations, bitwise operations, and other operations, and are manipulated or tested by machine instructions. Manipulated items are then often stored back to main memory, either by the same instruction or by a subsequent one. Modern processors use either static or dynamic RAM as main memory, with the latter usually accessed via one or more cache levels.
Processor registers are normally at the top of the memory hierarchy, and provide the fastest way to access data. The term normally refers only to the group of registers that are directly encoded as part of an instruction, as defined by the instruction set. However, modern high-performance CPUs often have duplicates of these "architectural registers" in order to improve performance via register renaming, allowing parallel and speculative execution. Modern x86 design acquired these techniques around 1995 with the releases of Pentium Pro, Cyrix 6x86, Nx586, and AMD K5.
When a computer program accesses the same data repeatedly, this is called locality of reference. Holding frequently used values in registers can be critical to a program's performance. Register allocation is performed either by a compiler in the code generation phase, or manually by an assembly language programmer.
Registers are normally measured by the number of bits they can hold, for example, an "8-bit register", "32-bit register", "64-bit register", or even more.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related publications (23)
Related people (16)
Related units (1)
Related concepts (167)
Addressing mode
Addressing modes are an aspect of the instruction set architecture in most central processing unit (CPU) designs. The various addressing modes that are defined in a given instruction set architecture define how the machine language instructions in that architecture identify the operand(s) of each instruction. An addressing mode specifies how to calculate the effective memory address of an operand by using information held in registers and/or constants contained within a machine instruction or elsewhere.
Program counter
The program counter (PC), commonly called the instruction pointer (IP) in Intel x86 and Itanium microprocessors, and sometimes called the instruction address register (IAR), the instruction counter, or just part of the instruction sequencer, is a processor register that indicates where a computer is in its program sequence. Usually, the PC is incremented after fetching an instruction, and holds the memory address of ("points to") the next instruction that would be executed.
Transmeta
Transmeta Corporation was an American fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California. It developed low power x86 compatible microprocessors based on a VLIW core and a software layer called Code Morphing Software. Code Morphing Software (CMS) consisted of an interpreter, a runtime system and a dynamic binary translator. x86 instructions were first interpreted one instruction at a time and profiled, then depending upon the frequency of execution of a code block, CMS would progressively generate more optimized translations.
Related courses (34)
CS-473: Embedded systems
Last year with R.Beuchat as teacher.
The main topics of this course are understanding and designing embedded system on a programmable circuit (FPGA). Students will be able to design a camera or a LCD
CS-307: Introduction to multiprocessor architecture
Multiprocessors are a core component in all types of computing infrastructure, from phones to datacenters. This course will build on the prerequisites of processor design and concurrency to introduce
CS-119(c): Information, Computation, Communication
L'objectif de ce cours est d'introduire les étudiants à la pensée algorithmique, de les familiariser avec les fondamentaux de l'Informatique et de développer une première compétence en programmation (
Related lectures (274)
Quantum Source Coding
Covers entropic notions in quantum sources, Shannon entropy, Von Neumann entropy, and source coding.
Understanding Microcontrollers: I/O
Explores the internal structure and software representation of input/output operations in microcontrollers.
Related MOOCs (3)
Understanding Microcontrollers
Ce cours donne les bases théoriques et pratiques nécessaires à une bonne compréhension et utilisation des microcontrôleurs. De nombreux exemples seront abordés. Des exercices seront proposés, compatib
IoT Systems and Industrial Applications with Design Thinking
The first MOOC to provide a comprehensive introduction to Internet of Things (IoT) including the fundamental business aspects needed to define IoT related products.
Signs and LED displays
Comprendre le fonctionnement des enseignes et des afficheurs à LED, depuis les petites enseignes à motifs fixes jusqu'aux écrans géants à LED. Apprendre à les fabriquer et à les programmer les microc