Basic Concepts

CS4063
Computer Organization and Assembly Language

Computer Engineering Department

National University of Science & Technology

 Overview
 Welcome to CS4063
 Assembly-, Machine-, and High-Level Languages
 Assembly Language Programming Tools
 Programmer’s View of a Computer System
 Data Representation

Overview of Course Contents

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 2
 Welcome to CS4063
 Software Tools
 Microsoft Macro Assembler (MASM) version 6.15
 Link Libraries provided by Author ([Link] and [Link])
 Microsoft Windows debugger
 ConTEXT Editor

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 3
 Textbook
 Kip Irvine: Assembly Language for Intel-Based Computers
 4th edition (2003) is now available in the bookstore
 5th edition (2007) is coming soon but not available this semester

 Read the textbook!

 Key for learning
and obtaining a
good grade

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Goals and Required Background
 Goals: broaden student’s interest and knowledge in …
 Basic organization of a computer system
 Intel IA-32 processor architecture
 How to write assembly language programs
 How high-level languages translate into assembly language
 Interaction between the assembly language programs, libraries,
the operating system, and the hardware
 How interrupts, system calls, and handlers work
 How to debug a program at the machine level
 Required Background
 The student should already be able to program confidently in at
least one high-level programming language, such as Java or C.
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 5
 Next …
 Assembly-, Machine-, and High-Level Languages
 Assembly Language Programming Tools
 Programmer’s View of a Computer System
 Data Representation

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 6
 Some Important Questions to Ask
 What is Assembly Language?
 Why Learn Assembly Language?
 What is Machine Language?
 How is Assembly related to Machine Language?
 What is an Assembler?
 How is Assembly related to High-Level Language?
 Is Assembly Language portable?

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 A Hierarchy of Languages

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 8
 Assembly and Machine Language
 Machine language
 Native to a processor: executed directly by hardware
 Instructions consist of binary code: 1s and 0s
 Assembly language
 Slightly higher-level language
 Readability of instructions is better than machine language
 One-to-one correspondence with machine language instructions
 Assemblers translate assembly to machine code
 Compilers translate high-level programs to machine code
 Either directly, or
 Indirectly via an assembler
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Compiler and Assembler

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Translating Languages
English: D is assigned the sum of A times B plus 10.

High-Level Language: D = A * B + 10

A statement in a high-level language is translated

typically into several machine-level instructions

Intel Assembly Language: Intel Machine Language:

mov eax, A A1 00404000
mul B F7 25 00404004
add eax, 10 83 C0 0A
mov D, eax A3 00404008

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Advantages of High-Level Languages
 Program development is faster
 High-level statements: fewer instructions to code
 Program maintenance is easier
 For the same above reasons
 Programs are portable
 Contain few machine-dependent details
 Can be used with little or no modifications on different machines
 Compiler translates to the target machine language
 However, Assembly language programs are not portable

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Why Learn Assembly Language?
 Two main reasons:
 Accessibility to system hardware
 Space and time efficiency

 Accessibility to system hardware

 Assembly Language is useful for implementing system software
 Also useful for small embedded system applications

 Space and Time efficiency

 Understanding sources of program inefficiency
 Tuning program performance
 Writing compact code

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Assembly vs High-Level Languages
Some representative types of applications:

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 14
 Next …
 Assembly-, Machine-, and High-Level Languages
 Assembly Language Programming Tools
 Programmer’s View of a Computer System
 Data Representation

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 15
 Assembler
 Software tools are needed for editing, assembling,
linking, and debugging assembly language programs
 An assembler is a program that converts source-code
programs written in assembly language into object files
in machine language
 Popular assemblers have emerged over the years for the
Intel family of processors. These include …
 TASM (Turbo Assembler from Borland)
 NASM (Netwide Assembler for both Windows and Linux), and
 GNU assembler distributed by the free software foundation

 You will use MASM (Macro Assembler from Microsoft)

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Linker and Link Libraries
 You need a linker program to produce executable files

 It combines your program's object file created by the

assembler with other object files and link libraries, and
produces a single executable program

 [Link] is the linker program provided with the

MASM distribution for linking 32-bit programs

 We will also use a link library for input and output

 Called [Link] developed by Kip Irvine

 Works in Win32 console mode under MS-Windows

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 17
 Debugger
 Allows you to trace the execution of a program
 Allows you to view code, memory, registers, etc.
 You will use the 32-bit Windows debugger

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Editor
 Allows you to create assembly language source files
 Some editors provide syntax highlighting features and
can be customized as a programming environment

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 19
 Next …
 Assembly-, Machine-, and High-Level Languages
 Assembly Language Programming Tools
 Programmer’s View of a Computer System
 Data Representation

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 20
 Programmer’s View of a Computer System

Increased level Application Programs

of abstraction High-Level Language Level 5

Assembly Language Level 4

Operating System
Level 3

Instruction Set
Architecture Level 2

Microarchitecture Level 1
Each level
Digital Logic hides the
Level 0 details of the
level below it

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Programmer's View – 2
 Application Programs (Level 5)
 Written in high-level programming languages
 Such as Java, C++, Pascal, Visual Basic . . .
 Programs compile into assembly language level (Level 4)
 Assembly Language (Level 4)
 Instruction mnemonics are used
 Have one-to-one correspondence to machine language
 Calls functions written at the operating system level (Level 3)
 Programs are translated into machine language (Level 2)
 Operating System (Level 3)
 Provides services to level 4 and 5 programs
 Translated to run at the machine instruction level (Level 2)
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Programmer's View – 3
 Instruction Set Architecture (Level 2)
 Specifies how a processor functions
 Machine instructions, registers, and memory are exposed
 Machine language is executed by Level 1 (microarchitecture)
 Microarchitecture (Level 1)
 Controls the execution of machine instructions (Level 2)
 Implemented by digital logic (Level 0)
 Digital Logic (Level 0)
 Implements the microarchitecture
 Uses digital logic gates
 Logic gates are implemented using transistors

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 23
 Next …
 Assembly-, Machine-, and High-Level Languages
 Assembly Language Programming Tools
 Programmer’s View of a Computer System
 Data Representation

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 24
 Data Representation
 Binary Numbers
 Hexadecimal Numbers
 Base Conversions
 Integer Storage Sizes
 Binary and Hexadecimal Addition
 Signed Integers and 2's Complement Notation
 Binary and Hexadecimal subtraction
 Carry and Overflow
 Character Storage

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Binary Numbers

 Digits are 1 and 0

 1 = true
 0 = false
 MSB – most significant bit
 LSB – least significant bit
 Bit numbering:

MSB LSB
1011001010011100
15 0

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Binary Numbers
 Each digit (bit) is either 1 or 0
 Each bit represents a power of 2:

Every binary
number is a
sum of powers
of 2

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Converting Binary to Decimal
Weighted positional notation shows how to calculate the
decimal value of each binary bit:
Decimal = (dn-1 2n-1)  (dn-2  2n-2)  ...  (d1  21)  (d0  20)
d = binary digit

binary 00001001 = decimal 9:

(1  23) + (1  20) = 9

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Convert Unsigned Decimal to Binary
 Repeatedly divide the decimal integer by 2. Each
remainder is a binary digit in the translated value:

least significant bit

most significant bit

stop when
37 = 100101 quotient is zero
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Hexadecimal Integers
Binary values are represented in hexadecimal.

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Converting Binary to Hexadecimal
• Each hexadecimal digit corresponds to 4 binary bits.
• Example: Translate the binary integer
000101101010011110010100 to hexadecimal:

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Converting Hexadecimal to Decimal
 Multiply each digit by its corresponding power of 16:

Decimal = (d3  163) + (d2  162) + (d1  161) + (d0  160)

d = hexadecimal digit

 Examples:
 Hex 1234 = (1  163) + (2  162) + (3  161) + (4  160) =

Decimal 4,660

 Hex 3BA4 = (3  163) + (11 * 162) + (10  161) + (4  160) =

Decimal 15,268

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Converting Decimal to Hexadecimal
 Repeatedly divide the decimal integer by 16. Each
remainder is a hex digit in the translated value:

least significant digit

most significant digit

stop when
quotient is zero

Decimal 422 = 1A6 hexadecimal

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Integer Storage Sizes

Standard sizes:

What is the largest unsigned integer that may be stored in 20 bits?

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Binary Addition
 Start with the least significant bit (rightmost bit)
 Add each pair of bits
 Include the carry in the addition, if present

carry: 1

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 (4)

+ 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 (7)

0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 (11)
bit position: 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Hexadecimal Addition
 Divide the sum of two digits by the number base (16). The quotient becomes
the carry value, and the remainder is the sum digit.

1 1
36 28 28 6A
42 45 58 4B
78 6D 80 B5

21 / 16 = 1, remainder 5

Important skill: Programmers frequently add and subtract the

addresses of variables and instructions.

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Signed Integers
 Several ways to represent a signed number
 Sign-Magnitude
 Biased
 1's complement
 2's complement
 Divide the range of values into 2 equal parts
 First part corresponds to the positive numbers (≥ 0)
 Second part correspond to the negative numbers (< 0)
 Focus will be on the 2's complement representation
 Has many advantages over other representations
 Used widely in processors to represent signed integers

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 37
 Two's Complement Representation
 Positive numbers 8-bit Binary Unsigned Signed
value value value
 Signed value = Unsigned value
00000000 0 0
 Negative numbers 00000001 1 +1

 Signed value = Unsigned value – 2n 00000010 2 +2

... ... ...
 n = number of bits
01111110 126 +126
 Negative weight for MSB
01111111 127 +127
 Another way to obtain the signed 10000000 128 -128
value is to assign a negative weight
10000001 129 -127
to most-significant bit
... ... ...
1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0
11111110 254 -2
-128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
11111111 255 -1
= -128 + 32 + 16 + 4 = -76
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Forming the Two's Complement
starting value 00100100 = +36
step1: reverse the bits (1's complement) 11011011
step 2: add 1 to the value from step 1 + 1
sum = 2's complement representation 11011100 = -36

Sum of an integer and its 2's complement must be zero:

00100100 + 11011100 = 00000000 (8-bit sum)  Ignore Carry

The easiest way to obtain the 2's complement of a

binary number is by starting at the LSB, leaving all the
0s unchanged, look for the first occurrence of a 1. Leave
this 1 unchanged and complement all the bits after it.

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 39
 Sign Bit
Highest bit indicates the sign. 1 = negative, 0 = positive

If highest digit of a hexadecimal is > 7, the value is negative

Examples: 8A and C5 are negative bytes
A21F and 9D03 are negative words
B1C42A00 is a negative double-word
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
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 Sign Extension
Step 1: Move the number into the lower-significant bits
Step 2: Fill all the remaining higher bits with the sign bit
 This will ensure that both magnitude and sign are correct
 Examples
 Sign-Extend 10110011 to 16 bits
10110011 = -77 11111111 10110011 = -77
 Sign-Extend 01100010 to 16 bits
01100010 = +98 00000000 01100010 = +98

 Infinite 0s can be added to the left of a positive number

 Infinite 1s can be added to the left of a negative number

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 41
 Two's Complement of a Hexadecimal
 To form the two's complement of a hexadecimal
 Subtract each hexadecimal digit from 15
 Add 1

 Examples:
2's complement of 6A3D = 95C2 + 1 = 95C3
2's complement of 92F0 = 6D0F + 1 = 6D10
2's complement of FFFF = 0000 + 1 = 0001

 No need to convert hexadecimal to binary

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 42
 Binary Subtraction
 When subtracting A – B, convert B to its 2's complement
 Add A to (–B)
00001100 00001100
– +
00000010 11111110 (2's complement)

00001010 00001010 (same result)

 Carry is ignored, because

 Negative number is sign-extended with 1's
 You can imagine infinite 1's to the left of a negative number
 Adding the carry to the extended 1's produces extended zeros

Practice: Subtract 00100101 from 01101001.

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 43
 Hexadecimal Subtraction
 When a borrow is required from the digit to the left,
add 16 (decimal) to the current digit's value

16 + 5 = 21

-1 11
C675 C675
- +
A247 5DB9 (2's complement)
242E 242E (same result)

 Last Carry is ignored

Practice: The address of var1 is 00400B20. The address of the next

variable after var1 is 0040A06C. How many bytes are used by var1?

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 44
 Ranges of Signed Integers
The unsigned range is divided into two signed ranges for positive
and negative numbers

Practice: What is the range of signed values that may be stored in 20 bits?

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 45
 Carry and Overflow
 Carry is important when …
 Adding or subtracting unsigned integers
 Indicates that the unsigned sum is out of range
 Either < 0 or >maximum unsigned n-bit value
 Overflow is important when …
 Adding or subtracting signed integers
 Indicates that the signed sum is out of range
 Overflow occurs when
 Adding two positive numbers and the sum is negative
 Adding two negative numbers and the sum is positive
 Can happen because of the fixed number of sum bits

Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 46
 Carry and Overflow Examples
 We can have carry without overflow and vice-versa
 Four cases are possible
1 1 1 1 1 1

0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 15 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 15
+ +
0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 8 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 245 (-8)

0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 23 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 7

Carry = 0 Overflow = 0 Carry = 1 Overflow = 0

1 1 1 1

0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 79 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 218 (-38)
+ +
0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 157 (-99)

1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 143 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 119
(-113)
Carry = 0 Overflow = 1 Carry = 1 Overflow = 1
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 47
 Character Storage
 Character sets
 Standard ASCII: 7-bit character codes (0 – 127)
 Extended ASCII: 8-bit character codes (0 – 255)
 Unicode: 16-bit character codes (0 – 65,535)
 Unicode standard represents a universal character set
 Defines codes for characters used in all major languages
 Used in Windows-XP: each character is encoded as 16 bits
 UTF-8: variable-length encoding used in HTML
 Encodes all Unicode characters
 Uses 1 byte for ASCII, but multiple bytes for other characters

 Null-terminated String
 Array of characters followed by a NULL character
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 48
 Printable ASCII Codes
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
2 space ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
4 @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
5 P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
6 ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
7 p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~ DEL

 Examples:
 ASCII code for space character = 20 (hex) = 32 (decimal)
 ASCII code for 'L' = 4C (hex) = 76 (decimal)
 ASCII code for 'a' = 61 (hex) = 97 (decimal)
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 49
 Control Characters
 The first 32 characters of ASCII table are used for control
 Control character codes = 00 to 1F (hex)
 Not shown in previous slide
 Examples of Control Characters
 Character 0 is the NULL character  used to terminate a string
 Character 9 is the Horizontal Tab (HT) character
 Character 0A (hex) = 10 (decimal) is the Line Feed (LF)
 Character 0D (hex) = 13 (decimal) is the Carriage Return (CR)
 The LF and CR characters are used together
 They advance the cursor to the beginning of next line

 One control character appears at end of ASCII table

 Character 7F (hex) is the Delete (DEL) character
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 50
Terminology for Data Representation
 Binary Integer
 Integer stored in memory in its binary format
 Ready to be used in binary calculations
 ASCII Digit String
 A string of ASCII digits, such as "123"
 ASCII binary
 String of binary digits: "01010101"
 ASCII decimal
 String of decimal digits: "6517"
 ASCII hexadecimal
 String of hexadecimal digits: "9C7B"
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 51
 Summary
 Assembly language helps you learn how software is constructed at
the lowest levels
 Assembly language has a one-to-one relationship with machine
language
 An assembler is a program that converts assembly language
programs into machine language
 A linker combines individual files created by an assembler into a
single executable file
 A debugger provides a way for a programmer to trace the execution
of a program and examine the contents of memory and registers
 A computer system can be viewed as consisting of layers. Programs
at one layer are translated or interpreted by the next lower-level layer
 Binary and Hexadecimal numbers are essential for programmers
working at the machine level.
Basic Concepts COE 205 – Computer Organization and Assembly Language – KFUPM
© Muhamed Mudawar – slide 52