9 Central Processing Unit
Now that you’ve learned about the electronic components used to build a central processing unit (CPU), it’s time to learn about some of the specifics of the x86-64 CPU. The two major manufacturers of these CPUs are Intel and AMD. An x86-64 CPU can be run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode. The 32-bit mode is called the compatibility mode, which allows you to run programs that were compiled for either a 32-bit or 16-bit environment.
In this book, we’ll focus on the 64-bit mode, which is called IA-32e in the Intel manuals and long mode in the AMD manuals. I’ll refer to it as the 64-bit mode. I’ll point out some of ...
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