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Instruction set architecture

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mudlock (talk | contribs) at 15:56, 15 April 2002 (It's called x86, not Pentium, durn it! Also added link to MIPS.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

An instruction set, or instruction set architecture (ISA), is a specification detailing the commands that a computer's CPU should be able to understand and execute, or the set of all commands implemented by a particular CPU design.

Computers with different internal designs can share a common instruction set, e.g. the Intel Pentium and the AMD Athlon both implement nearly identical versions of the x86 instruction set, but have radically different internal designs.

Some examples of ISAs:

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