Machine code

Program execution
General concepts
Types of code
Compilation strategies
  • Ahead-of-time (AOT)
  • Just-in-time (JIT)
    • Tracing just-in-time
    • Compile and go system
  • Precompilation
  • Transcompilation
  • Recompilation
Notable runtimes
Notable compilers & toolchains

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.[1] Machine code is classified as native with respect to its host CPU since it is the language that CPU interprets directly.[2] A software interpreter is a virtual machine that processes virtual machine code.

A machine-code instruction causes the CPU to perform a specific task such as:

An instruction set architecture (ISA) defines the interface to a CPU and varies by groupings or families of CPU design such as x86 and ARM. Generally, machine code compatible with one family is not with others, but there are exceptions. The VAX architecture includes optional support of the PDP-11 instruction set. The IA-64 architecture includes optional support of the IA-32 instruction set. And, the PowerPC 615 can natively process both PowerPC and x86 instructions.

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