The CPU has a set of registers that quickly store a small that is either 8 bits, 32 bits or 64 bits. This depends on the instruction set. Different CPU’s can also have different registers. Here are the different types of data registers you can find on a CPU:

  • Data registers
  • Address registers
  • General-purpose registers Reference 1

Internal registers

The CPU has several internal registers that the CPU uses to perform instructions. These are

  • accumulator - Holds the last result
  • MDR - Memory data register
  • MAR - Memory address register

General purpose registers

All CPU’s have general purpose registers. They have different names for different machine architectures. Here are some of the registers from a x86_64 CPU

  • EAX
  • EBX
  • ECX
  • EDX
  • ESI
  • EDI
  • EBP
  • ESP These registers hold:
  • Operands for logical and arithmetic operations.
  • Operands for address calculations.
  • Memory pointers. Reference 2

See also

References

  1. Wikipedia
  2. Intel developer manual