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3. Software and the CPU

There are two requirements for any software or computer instruction.

  • A person must be able to write and understand it
  • A computer must be able to carry it out.

But these two requirements are very different.

A computer can only operate with pure binary numbers (bit patterns) such as


  Instructions Data  
  1110111100101110 1000111011101010 1001011111000111 0111001111100101 1011111010101110 0000111011101010 1110111110001100 1011001111100101  
 

It does not matter if the bit patterns are instructions or data - they must both be in binary form.

This set of bit patterns is called machine code and it is how a computer handles information within the CPU.

These bit patterns will make little or no sense to a computer programmer.

The movie below shows a CPU manipulating data internally

 

 

 

Challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: what is machine code