What is the collection of commands that a processor understands called?

• A. Instruction set
• B. Compiler
• C. Firmware
• D. Assembly language

Answer: (A)

The collection of commands a processor can execute is called the instruction set. This is the set of operations the CPU understands, defined by its architecture, with each instruction encoded in a specific binary format (opcodes and operands). Different processors have different instruction sets, and software is built to generate code that fits that set.

Other terms don’t describe the actual list of commands the CPU can execute: a compiler translates high-level code into machine code for a given instruction set but isn’t the set itself; firmware is the low-level software stored with hardware to control its operations; assembly language is the human-readable mnemonics that represent the machine instructions, not the processor’s inherent collection of commands.