When we discussed operands and addressing modes in Chapter 6, the topic of indirection
arose. Now that we understand memory organization, we can understand how
a processor evaluates an indirect operand. As an example, suppose a processor executes
an instruction in which an operand specifies an immediate value of 0x1be1f, and specifies
indirection. Further suppose that the processor has been designed to use thirty-two
bit values. Because the operand specifies an immediate value, the processor first loads
the immediate value (hexadecimal 1be1f). Because the operand specifies indirection,
the processor treats the resulting value as an address in memory, and fetches the word
from the address. If the values in memory correspond to the values shown in Figure
10.10, the processor will load the value from the rightmost word in the last line of the
figure, and the final operand value will be 6.