slae x32 intro

Question 1

What are the computer building blocks?

Answer 1

CPU, Memory, IO devices

Question 2

What components make up the CPU?

Answer 2

Control Unit, Execution Unit, Registers, Flags

Question 3

What does the Control Unit handle?

Answer 3

Retrieve / Decode instructions / Store data in memory

Question 4

Execution Unit?

Answer 4

Actual execution of instruction happens

Question 5

What do the registers handle?

Answer 5

Internal memory locations used as “variables”

Question 6

What are Flags?

Answer 6

Used to indicate various “event” when execution is happening

Question 7

What are the Logical IA-32 Registers?

Answer 7

General Purpose, Segment, Flags and EIP, Floating Point Unit Registers, MMX Registers, XMM Registers

Question 8

What are the first 4 General Purpose Registers?

Answer 8

EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX

Question 9

What are the second 4 General Purpose Registers?

Answer 9

ESP, EBP, ESI, EDI

Question 10

EAX common functionality?

Answer 10

Accumulator Register is used for storing operands and the result data

Question 11

EBX common functionality?

Answer 11

Base Register - points to data

Question 12

ECX common functionality?

Answer 12

Count Register - Loop operations

Question 13

EDX common functionality?

Answer 13

Data Register - I/O Pointer

Question 14

ESI and EDI common functionality?

Answer 14

Data Pointer Registers for memory operations

Question 15

ESP common functionality?

Answer 15

Stack Pointer Register

Question 16

EBP common functionality?

Answer 16

Stack Data Pointer Register

Question 17

What 6 components make up the Segment Registers?

Answer 17

CS (code), DS (data), SS (stack), ES (data), FS (data), and GS (data)

Question 18

What is FPU?

Answer 18

Floating Point Unit - handles floating point numbers. 80 bits wide

Question 19

What is SIMD?

Answer 19

Single Instruction Multiple Data

Question 20

What components make up SIMD?

Answer 20

MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3

Question 21

What is the structure of MMX

Answer 21

Carved out of FPU and makes up the first lower 64 bits

Question 22

What is the structure of XXM

Answer 22

128 bits in 7, XMM0-XXM7

Question 23

What are the 3 CPU modes for IA-32?

Answer 23

Real Mode, Protected Mode*, System Management Mode

Question 24

What re the 3 Memory Models?

Answer 24

Flat Model*, Segmented Model, Real-Address Mode Model

Question 25

What two components make up the Virtual Memory Model?

Answer 25

Kernel Space (1 GB) and User Space (3 GB)

Question 26

What six components make up the User Space portion of the Virtual Memory Model?

Answer 26

Stack, Share Libs + Mappings, Heap, BSS, Data, and Text

Question 27

What is the Heap memory used for?

Answer 27

Dynamic Memory

Question 28

What is the BSS memory used for?

Answer 28

Uninitialized Data

Question 29

What is the Data memory used for?

Answer 29

Initialized Data

Question 30

What is the Text memory used for?

Answer 30

Program Code

Question 31

What is the Stack memory used for?

Answer 31

Function Args + Local Variables

Question 32

What are three methods to view process organization?

Answer 32

/proc/pid/maps, pmap, gdb