Comment by measurablefunc
3 days ago
> However, every instruction has a set of valid forms. Each form dictates the kind of each operand (register, memory, immediate, label), the class of each register (general-purpose, vector, mask), the width of each operand, the range each immediate may take, and what the instruction clobbers (flags, memory, particular registers). In x86, a mulps wants a 128-bit vector register; a crc32 in one of its forms wants a 32-bit destination and an 8-bit memory source; div reads and writes rdx and rax whether ask to it do or not.
The instructions have bit-width, arity/source/target requirements so technically there are types whereas an abstract virtual machine that only operates on some fixed set of integer registers is mostly untyped (modulo number of registers).
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