Chapter 1. Machine Interface

Table of Contents
Processor Architecture
Data Representation

Processor Architecture

The AMD64 Architecture is specified by the following documents

Applications conforming to this specification must provide feedback to the user if a feature that is required for correct execution of the application is not present. Applications conforming to this specification should attempt to execute in a diminished capacity if a required instruction set feature is not present.

Only instructions which do not require elevated privileges may be used.

Applications may not make system calls directly. The interfaces in the C library must be used instead.

This specfication does not provide any performance guarantees of a conforming system. A system conforming to this specification may be implemented in either hardware or software.