Ask HN: How does the software and hardware interaction work?

[lexi-mono]

As a software developer, I realize that I have almost no idea about how the hardware actually works and how the interaction with software is achieved. I know, of course, some theory about computer architecture, but I still can't figure out how bits are represented in a hardware board or how a processor can do the things it does only using basic arithmetic operations.

Where could I learn about this stuff? Can you recommend any good course, videos or articles?

[brudgers]

Knuth's MIX & MMIX are the languages of TAcO.

MMIX section is a free downloadhttp://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc1.ps.gz

More here: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/mmix.html

[SamReidHughes]

Possibly http://www.nand2tetris.org/.