Load–store architecture

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Short description: Type of instruction set architecture

In computer engineering, a load–store architecture (or a register–register architecture) is an instruction set architecture that divides instructions into two categories: memory access (load and store between memory and registers) and ALU operations (which only occur between registers).[1]:9-12

Some RISC architectures such as PowerPC, SPARC, RISC-V, ARM, and MIPS are load–store architectures.[1]:9–12

For instance, in a load–store approach both operands and destination for an ADD operation must be in registers. This differs from a register–memory architecture (for example, a CISC instruction set architecture such as x86) in which one of the operands for the ADD operation may be in memory, while the other is in a register.[1]:9–12

The earliest example of a load–store architecture was the CDC 6600.[1]:54–56 Almost all vector processors (including many GPUs[2] ) use the load–store approach.[3]

See also

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Michael J. Flynn (1995). Computer architecture: pipelined and parallel processor design. ISBN 0867202041. 
  2. "AMD GCN reference". http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/12/AMD_Southern_Islands_Instruction_Set_Architecture.pdf. 
  3. Harvey G. Cragon (1996). Memory systems and pipelined processors. pp. 512–513. ISBN 0867204745.