'how does the assembler know which type of machine code to generate?

So I know that assemblers are basically programs that convert say C code to certain machine code that the CPU can understand. Now my question is, how does the assembler know what kind of machine code to generate that my CPU can understand. There are a million different types of CPUs with their own machine-specific instruction set, how does the assembler know which type it should generate. Apologies in advance for asking a stupid question like this but it's been bothering me for quite some time now.

assemblycpu-architecturelow-level


Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source

Related Questions