Editing X86 (section)

===Purpose===
Although the main registers (with the exception of the instruction pointer) are "general-purpose" in the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the instruction set and can be used for anything, it was originally envisioned that they be used for the following purposes:
* AL/AH/AX/EAX/RAX: Accumulator
* CL/CH/CX/ECX/RCX: Counter (for use with loops and strings)
* DL/DH/DX/EDX/RDX: Extend the precision of the accumulator (e.g. combine 32-bit EAX and EDX for 64-bit integer operations in 32-bit code)
* BL/BH/BX/EBX/RBX: Base index (for use with arrays)
* SP/ESP/RSP: Stack pointer for top address of the stack.
* BP/EBP/RBP: Stack base pointer for holding the address of the current [[stack frame]].
* SI/ESI/RSI: ''Source index'' for [[string (computer science)|string]] operations.
* DI/EDI/RDI: ''Destination index'' for string operations.
* IP/EIP/RIP: Instruction pointer. Holds the [[program counter]], the address of next instruction.

Segment registers:
*CS: Code
*DS: Data
*SS: Stack
*ES: Extra data
*FS: Extra data #2
*GS: Extra data #3

No particular purposes were envisioned for the other 8 registers available only in 64-bit mode.

Some instructions compile and execute more efficiently when using these registers for their designed purpose. For example, using AL as an [[Accumulator (computing)|accumulator]] and adding an immediate byte value to it produces the efficient ''add to AL'' [[opcode]] of 04h, whilst using the BL register produces the generic and longer ''add to register'' opcode of 80C3h. Another example is double precision division and multiplication that works specifically with the AX and DX registers.

Modern compilers benefited from the introduction of the ''sib'' byte (''scale-index-base byte'') that allows registers to be treated uniformly ([[minicomputer]]-like). However, using the sib byte universally is non-optimal, as it produces longer encodings than only using it selectively when necessary. (The main benefit of the sib byte is the orthogonality and more powerful addressing modes it provides, which make it possible to save instructions and the use of registers for address calculations such as scaling an index.) Some special instructions lost priority in the hardware design and became slower than equivalent small code sequences. A notable example is the LODSW instruction.