Assembly Language

Abstract Assembly language is a generic term that refers to a whole class of computer programming languages that are specific to particular computers or processors. The assembly language for a specific computer is derived from its machine language. An assembly language uses mnemonic abbreviations to facilitate the writing of computer programs. It is common to use the hardware platform on which it is implemented, when referring to a specific assembly language. Assembly language is limited to a basic set of operations that do not easily lend themselves to higher levels of abstraction. There are four basic types of operations in assembly language: Loading data from memory and storing data to memory Addition of two data items Comparison of two data items Jumping from one location to another there are three major advantages to programming in assembly language versus high level language. They are speed, control, and efficiency in memory use. The decision of whether to use a high level language versus assembly language will be an evaluation of the tradeoff between higher productivity in a high level language and the speed, control, and efficiency advantages of assembly language.