Introduction
Assembly programming offers a "1-to-1" mapping of assembly instructions to machine instructions. Due to this "1-to-1" mapping, assembly programming is closely tied to the capabilities of the machines (CPUs) being programmed.
This lab gives an overview to the "low-level" Assembly programming language using the Watson Virtual Machine (WVM). The WVM has the following specifications:
- 16 32-bit Registers
- 256 32-bit Memory Locations
- CPU with 18 machine level instructions
- Data Bus that links the CPU and the memory
The WVM is a simple yet powerful tool to help you understand what is happening at the low levels of a computer. With only 18 instructions, you can perform a wide variety of programming functions.