Download Intel® Itanium(TM) Assembler User's Guide

IA-32 system
environment
The system environment as defined by the Pentium® and
Pentium Pro processors.
index register
Any of these general registers: eax, ebc, ecx, edx, ebp, esp, esi,
and edi.
instruction
An operation code (opcode) that performs a specific machine
operation.
instruction group
Itanium(TM) architecture instructions are organized in instruction
groups. Each instruction group contains one or more statically
contiguous instructions that execute in parallel. An instruction
group must contain at least one instruction; there is no upper limit
on the number of instructions in an instruction group.
An instruction group is terminated statically by a stop, and
dynamically by taken branches. Stops are represented by a double
semi-colon (;;). You can explicitly define stops. Stops
immediately follow an instruction, or appear on a separate line.
They can be inserted between two instructions on the same line,
as a semi-colon (;) is used to separate two instructions.
Instruction Pointer
(IP)
A 64-bit instruction that holds the address of the bundle which
contains the currently executing instruction. The IP is
incremented as instructions are executed and can be set to a new
value with a branch.
Instruction Set
Architecture
The architecture that defines application level resources,
including user-level instructions and user-visible register files.
IP
See instruction pointer.
IP-relative addressing Code that uses its own address (commonly called the program
counter, or "PC"; in Itanium(TM) architecture this is also called
the instruction pointer, or IP) as a base register for addressing
other code and data.
ISA
See Instruction Set Architecture.
KB
Kilobytes.
little-endian
A method of storing a number so that the least significant byte is
stored at the lowest addressed byte.
load module
An executable unit produced by the linker, either a main program
or a DLL. A program consists of at least a main program, and
may also require one or more DLLs to satisfy its dependencies.
MB
Megabytes.
nop
A "no operation" instruction is a real instruction for the
processor, where the processor takes no action.
69