The EVM

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (YP §9): the quasi-Turing-complete stack machine that executes account code. Execution proceeds in frames; each frame owns an operand stack, a byte-addressed memory, a program counter, and a gas counter, and message calls and contract creations push new frames. Every operation is metered — a frame halts exceptionally the moment its gas is exhausted — so execution is total by construction.

Read the pages in order:

• Machine state — the frame: operand stack, memory, program counter, gas, and the halting discipline.
• Halting — normal stops, exceptional halts, and frame status.
• The instruction set — the opcode space and its fork-gated availability.
• The interpreter — the fetch–decode–dispatch run loop.
• Opcode semantics — the operational rules of every instruction.
• The gas schedule — intrinsic costs, memory expansion, and access-list pricing (EIP-2929).
• Precompiled contracts — the address-mapped native contracts and their gas rules.
• The transaction state transition — validity, intrinsic gas, the fee market, and the frame that a transaction ultimately runs (YP §6).