IA32 / x86 Architecture Documentation

The x86 architecture has a 20 year history from being the first one to pioneer the 'personal computer' market to supplying the CPU core for millions of computers today. Started in 1981 with the 8086 CPU it has had a breakthroughs with the 80386 and 80586 (Pentium) CPU's. There are vendors who produce different CPU's but maintain x86 compatibility, such as AMD. Anyway, being cluttered and running with an overdue CISC design externally, there is lots of trash in this architecture, which Intel aims to wipe away with one big flash in the IA64 architecture, which uses a completely different design. It is the CPU with most operating systems being available for. All common Microsoft Windows systems run on this CPU, so do all flavours of Linux, BSD (BSDI, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) and Solaris.

File	Size	Description	Source
The IA-32 Intel Architecture Software Developers Manual Vol.1: Basic Architecture (pdf)	3981 kb	Introduction into the IA32 / x86 architecture	Intel
The IA-32 Intel Architecture Software Developers Manual Vol.2: Instruction Set Reference (pdf)	6691 kb	The complete instruction set up to the latest x86 based CPU	Intel
The IA-32 Intel Architecture Software Developers Manual Vol.3: System Programming Guide (pdf)	6341 kb	ABI and OS programming information	Intel

Being the most popular architecture ever, there is a real galore of information available for it. First try the 'official', then the 'hacker way'. If that does not help, stick with the usual.