machine code
Sign in to saveset of instructions executed directly by a computer's central processing unit (CPU)
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Machine code is the set of instructions that a computer's processor understands and executes directly to perform tasks. It matters because it's the fundamental language that all software ultimately gets converted into so that your computer can actually run programs and do what you ask it to do.
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Machine language monitor running on a W65C816S microprocessor, displaying code disassembly and dumps of processor register and memory
In computing, machine code is data encoded and structured to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU) via its programmable interface. A computer program consists primarily of sequences of machine-code instructions. Machine code is classified as native with respect to its host CPU since it is the language that the CPU interprets directly. Some software interpreters translate the programming language that they interpret into a virtual machine code (bytecode) and process it with a P-code machine.