1: Introduction

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The purpose of this text is to provide a reference for University level assembly language and systems programming courses. Specifically, this text addresses the x86-64(For more information, refer to: http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64) instruction set for the popular x86-64 class of processors using the Ubuntu 64-bit Operating System (OS). While the provided code and various examples should work under any Linux-based 64-bit OS, they have only been tested under Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (64-bit).

The x86-64 is a Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC(For more information, refer to: http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex..._set_computing)) CPU design. This refers to the internal processor design philosophy. CISC processors typically include a wide variety of instructions (sometimes overlapping), varying instructions sizes, and a wide range of addressing modes. The term was retroactively coined in contrast to Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC(For more information, refer to: http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced..._set_computing)).