Incomputer engineering, a register–memory architecture is an instruction set architecture that allows operations to be performed on (or from) memory, as well as registers.[1] If the architecture allows all operands to be in memory or in registers, or in combinations, it is called a "register plus memory" architecture.[1]
In a register–memory approach one of the operands for operations such as the ADD operation may be in memory, while the other is in a register. This differs from a load–store architecture (used by RISC designs such as MIPS) in which both operands for an ADD operation must be in registers before the ADD.[1]
An example of register-memory architecture is Intel x86.[1] Examples of register plus memory architecture are:
