What are machine languages and example?

Answer 1

Machine languages are the low-level native languages of machines and each machine has its own variant of machine language specific to the machine architecture. Physical machine languages are known as machine code while virtual machine languages are known as byte code. Unlike machine code which requires no further translation, byte code must be interpreted by the virtual machine runtime in order to produce the required machine code of the underlying hardware.

Machines do not understand high level programming languages, but they can be programmed to compile high-level source code into a lower-level code. For instance, C and C++ compile to machine code while Java compiles to byte code which is then interpreted by the Java virtual machine to produce the required machine code.

Assembly language (ASM) is a low-level symbolic code that translates near 1-to-1 with machine code but, unlike high-level languages which are generally portable, assembly languages are specific to the architecture and therefore non-portable.

Machine code is an extremely simple language, consisting of a text segment and a data segment. The text segment contains the operation codes (opcodes) and their associated operands, both of which are binary encoded. The operands are typically CPU registers or offset memory addresses. A data segment contains the code's static data (global variables, static variables and constants).

Being non-portable, machine code will only execute upon the machine types for which it was specifically intended. However, some architectures make use of microprograms to facilitate a common machine language interface across a line or family of processors. Microcode layers can also be used to implement an emulator which allows one computer to present the architecture of a different computer. This can be used to allow porting from older machines to newer machines.

Being machine specific, machine languages don't have names of their own (unlike high-level languages like C++ and Java), they are simply named according to the architectures to which they apply. Thus an Intel architecture 32-bit 80386 processor uses machine language that conforms to IA-32 assembly, also known as x86-32 assembly, which is a 32-bit extension to the original 16-bit Intel x86 architectures used in 8086-80286 processors.

Answer 2

A machine language is a series of 0 and 1 bits (binary code) that instructs the computer how to operate. There are as many examples of machine languages as there are different models of machines.

Common examples include x86 instructions (for Intel, AMD, and compatible processors), Motorola (cell phones), RISC (for the various RISC processors out there, including ARM processors in many modern game consoles), and even custom machine code for embedded systems.

Machine languages are not compiled languages (such as C++) nor assembled languages (namely, ASM or Assembler). All languages are (eventually) converted into machine language, and it is that language that is understood by the processor directly. The "microcode" within the processor executes the directions encoded in each instruction in the machine language in order to perform the desired task.