Intro to Assembly

1- Wikipedia: An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other integrated circuits.

2- Assembly consists of words like ADD,MOV,SUB,CALL.

3- Assembly language  has a one to one relationship with the machine language; each instruction  corresponds to a single machine language instruction. While C++ and Java have one to many relationship with the assembly language and the machine language.

4- Assembly language is not portable because it is designed for a specific processor family. there are many assembly languages now based on different families.

5- assembly language will be helpful in game programming, memory management, device driver programming, embedded systems.

6- device drivers are programmers that translate operating system commands into specific references to hardware details.

7- Binary numbers are often used to describe the contents of computer memory, and sometimes decimal and hexadecimal are used.

8- Each numbering system has a base or a maximum number of symbols that can be assigned to a single digit.

9- binary -> base 2 , decimal ->base 10 , octal -> base 8 , hexadecimal – > base 16.

10- A computer stores instructions and data in memory as collection of charges. to represent these entities with numbers requires a system that uses the concept of on and off. Since binary numbers are base 2 which means they that each binary digit(Bit) is either 0 or 1 , it can be used to represent the on or off state.

11- Bits are numbered sequentially starting at zero on the right side and increasing toward the left. The bit on the left is called the most significant bit(MSB) and the bit on the right is the least significant bit(LSB).

12-Binary integers can be signed or unsigned. A signed integer is +ve or -ve .

13- There are several concepts that needs to be revised like the conversion from and and to binary system , addition, complements. These are needed before starting Boolean algebra.