Do x86 instructions require their own encoding as well as all of their arguments to be present in memory at the same time?
Yes, they do require the machine code and all memory operands. Shouldn’t the CPU access the memory pages sequentially, i.e. first read the instruction and then access the memory operand? Yes that’s logically what happens, but a page-fault exception interrupts that 2-step process and discards any progress. The CPU doesn’t have any way to remember … Read more