Assembly Language  Language of the machine  More primitive than higher level languages e.g., no sophisticated control flow  Very restrictive e.g., MIPS arithmetic instructions  We'll be working with the MIPS instruction set architecture  similar to other architectures developed since the 1980 s  used by Intel, NEC, Nintendo, Silicon Graphics, Sony, ...  32-bit architecture  32 bit data line and address line  data and addresses are 32-bit