In
computer engineering
Computer engineering (CE, CoE, or CpE) is a branch of engineering specialized in developing computer hardware and software.
It integrates several fields of electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science.
Computer engi ...
, a load–store architecture (or a register–register architecture) is an
instruction set architecture
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, ...
that divides instructions into two categories:
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...
access (
load and store between memory and
registers) and
ALU operations (which only occur between registers).
[
]
Some
RISC
In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...
architectures such as
PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
,
SPARC,
RISC-V
RISC-V (pronounced "risk-five") is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. The project commenced in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley. It transfer ...
,
ARM, and
MIPS are load–store architectures.
[
For instance, in a load–store approach both operands and destination for an ADD operation must be in registers. This differs from a register–memory architecture (for example, a CISC instruction set architecture such as ]x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
) in which one of the operands for the ADD operation may be in memory, while the other is in a register.[
The earliest example of a load–store architecture was the CDC 6600.][ Almost all vector processors (including many GPUs) use the load–store approach.][
]
See also
* Load–store unit
* Register–memory architecture
References
Computer architecture
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