content: I wasn't too impressed with the TED video.  It was more of an explanation of caching and data storage than memory. Here is a good CPU video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNN_tTXABUA Then to get an idea of what kind of instructions a CPU instruction set has, you can check this simulator out: http://y86.js.org/.  I will say that just about every person who has learned to write assembly languages hates doing it.