The characteristics of machine architecture and the implementation of processing and storage influence the processor's assembler language. The assembler supports the various processors that implement the POWER and PowerPC architectures. The assembler can support both the POWER and PowerPC architectures because the two architectures share a large number of instructions.
This chapter provides an overview and comparison of the POWER and PowerPC architectures and tells how data is stored in main memory and in registers. It also discusses the basic functions for both the POWER and PowerPC instruction sets.
All the instructions discussed in this chapter are nonprivileged. Therefore, all the registers discussed in this chapter are related to nonprivileged instructions. For information on privileged instructions and their related registers, see the PowerPC Architecture.
The following processing and storage articles provide an overview of the system microprocessor and tells how data is stored both in main memory and in registers. This information provides some of the conceptual background necessary to understand the function of the system microprocessor's instruction set and pseudo-ops.
PowerPC Architecture.