Curiosity beyond abstractions: how is bytecode executed? how do device drivers work?

Posted by Yktula on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Yktula
Published on 2010-05-16T21:58:18Z Indexed on 2010/05/23 15:41 UTC
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Filed under:

assembly

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Hardware

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abstraction

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device-driver

Everything I've seen on *nix has been a set of abstractions off hardware, but I'm curious as to how the hardware works.
I've programmed in assembly, but that's still only a set of abstractions.

How does a processor understand assembly opcodes (as bytecode)?
How do device drivers work (with an explanation at a lower level (of abstraction))?

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