Intel processors have been a major force in personal computing for more than 30 years. An understanding of low level computing mechanisms used in Intel chips as taught in this course by Xeno Kovah serves as a foundation upon which to better understand other hardware, as well as many technical specialties such as reverse engineering, compiler design, operating system design, code optimization, and vulnerability exploitation.

25% of the time will be spent bootstrapping knowledge of fully OS-independent aspects of Intel architecture. 50% will be spent learning Windows tools and analysis of simple programs. The final 25% of time will be spent learning Linux tools for analysis.

This class serves as a foundation for the follow on Intermediate level x86 class. It teaches the basic concepts and describes the hardware that assembly code deals with. It also goes over many of the most common assembly instructions. Although x86 has hundreds of special purpose instructions, students will be shown it is possible to read most programs by knowing only around 20-30 instructions and their variations.