Course overview

Computer Organization and Assembly Languages

Yung-Yu Chuang
2008/09/15

with slides by Kip Irvine

Logistics
• Meeting time: 2:20pm-5:20pm, Monday
• Classroom: CSIE Room 104
• Instructor: Yung-Yu Chuang
• Teaching assistants: 李根逸 / 黃子桓
• Webpage:
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cyy/asm
id / password
• Forum:
http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cyy/forum/viewforum.php?f=13
• Mailing list: [email protected]
Please subscribe via
https://cmlmail.csie.ntu.edu.tw/mailman/listinfo/assembly/
Prerequisites
• Better to have programming experience with
some high-level language such C, C ++,Java …
Textbook
• Readings and slides
References (TOY)
Princeton’s Introduction to CS,
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/intro
cs/50machine/
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/intro
cs/60circuits/
References (ARM)
ARM Assembly Language
Programming, Peter Knaggs and
Stephen Welsh

ARM System Developer’s Guide,

Andrew Sloss, Dominic Symes and
Chris Wright
References (ARM)
Whirlwind Tour of ARM Assembly,
TONC, Jasper Vijn.

ARM System-on-chip Architecture,

Steve Furber.
References (IA32)
Assembly Language for Intel-Based
Computers, 5th Edition, Kip Irvine

The Art of Assembly Language, Randy

Hyde
References (IA32)
Michael Abrash' s Graphics Programming
Black Book

Computer Systems: A Programmer's

Perspective, Randal E. Bryant and David
R. O'Hallaron
Grading (subject to change)
• Assignments (4~5 projects, 50%)
• Class participation (5%)
• Midterm exam (20%)
• Final project (25%)
– Examples from last years
Computer Organization and Assembly language
• It is not only about assembly and not only about
“computer”.
Early computers
Early programming tools
First popular PCs
Early PCs
• Intel 8086
processor
• 768KB memory
• 20MB disk
• Dot-Matrix
printer (9-pin)
GUI/IDE
More advanced architectures
• Pipeline
• SIMD
• Multi-core
• Cache
More advanced software
More “computers” around us
My computers

Desktop
(Intel Pentium D
3GHz, Nvidia 7900)
VAIO TX17TP
(Intel Pentium M 1.1GHz)

GBA SP iPod classic Nokia 6070

(ARM7 16.78MHz) (ARM7 80MHz) (ARM7 51MHz)
Computer Organization and Assembly language
• It is not only about assembly and not only about
“computer”.
• It will cover
– Basic concept of computer systems and architecture
– ARM assembly language
– x86 assembly language
TOY machine
TOY machine
• Starting from a simple construct
TOY machine
• Build several components and connect them
together
TOY machine
• Almost as good as any computers
TOY machine
int A[32]; A DUP 32 10: C020

lda R1, 1 20: 7101

lda RA, A 21: 7A00
i=0; lda RC, 0 22: 7C00
Do {
RD=stdin; read ld RD, 0xFF 23: 8DFF
if (RD==0) break; bz RD, exit 24: CD29
add R2, RA, RC 25: 12AC
A[i]=RD; sti RD, R2 26: BD02
i=i+1; add RC, RC, R1 27: 1CC1
} while (1); bz R0, read 28: C023

printr(); exit jl RF, printr 29: FF2B

hlt 2A: 0000
ARM
• ARM architecture
• ARM assembly programming
IA32
• IA-32 Processor Architecture
• Data Transfers, Addressing, and Arithmetic
• Procedures
• Conditional Processing
• Integer Arithmetic
• Advanced Procedures
• Strings and Arrays
• High-Level Language Interface
• Real Arithmetic (FPU)
• SIMD
• Code Optimization
• Writing toy OS
What you will learn
• Basic principle of computer architecture
• How your computer works
• How your C programs work
• Assembly basics
• ARM assembly programming
• IA-32 assembly programming
• Specific components, FPU/MMX
• Code optimization
• Interface between assembly to high-level
language
• Toy OS writing
Why taking this course?
• Does anyone really program in assembly nowadays?

• Yes, at times, you do need to write assembly code.

• It is foundation for computer architecture and
compilers. It is related to electronics, logic design
and operating system.
CSIE courses
• Hardware: electronics, digital system,
architecture
• Software: operating system, compiler
wikipedia
• Today, assembly language is used primarily for
direct hardware manipulation, access to
specialized processor instructions, or to address
critical performance issues. Typical uses
are device drivers, low-level embedded
systems, and real-time systems.
Reasons for not using assembly
• Development time: it takes much longer to
develop in assembly. Harder to debug, no type
checking, side effects…
• Maintainability: unstructured, dirty tricks
• Portability: platform-dependent
Reasons for using assembly
• Educational reasons: to understand how CPUs
and compilers work. Better understanding to
efficiency issues of various constructs.
• Developing compilers, debuggers and other
development tools.
• Hardware drivers and system code
• Embedded systems
• Developing libraries.
• Accessing instructions that are not available
through high-level languages.
• Optimizing for speed or space
To sum up
• It is all about lack of smart compilers

• Faster code, compiler is not good enough

• Smaller code , compiler is not good enough,
e.g. mobile devices, embedded devices, also
Smaller code → better cache performance →
faster code
• Unusual architecture , there isn’t even a
compiler or compiler quality is bad, eg GPU,
DSP chips, even MMX.
Overview

• Virtual Machine Concept

• Data Representation
• Boolean Operations
Translating Languages

English: Display the sum of A times B plus C.

C++:
cout << (A * B +
C);
Intel Machine Language:
Assembly Language:
A1 00000000
mov eax,A
F7 25 00000004
mul B
add eax,C 03 05 00000008
call WriteInt E8 00500000
Virtual machines
Abstractions for computers
High-Level Language

• Level 5
• Application-oriented languages
• Programs compile into assembly language
(Level 4)

cout << (A * B + C);

Assembly Language
• Level 4
• Instruction mnemonics that have a 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)
mov eax, A
mul B
add eax, C
call WriteInt
Operating System
• Level 3
• Provides services
• Programs translated and run at the instruction
set architecture level (Level 2)
Instruction Set Architecture
• Level 2
• Also known as conventional machine language
• Executed by Level 1 program
(microarchitecture, Level 1)

A1 00000000
F7 25 00000004
03 05 00000008
E8 00500000
Microarchitecture
• Level 1
• Interprets conventional machine instructions
(Level 2)
• Executed by digital hardware (Level 0)
Digital Logic
• Level 0
• CPU, constructed from digital logic gates
• System bus
• Memory
Data representation
• Computer is a construction of digital circuits
with two states: on and off
• You need to have the ability to translate
between different representations to examine
the content of the machine
• Common number systems: binary, octal,
decimal and hexadecimal
Binary Representations
• Electronic Implementation
– Easy to store with bistable elements
– Reliably transmitted on noisy and inaccurate wires

0 1 0

3.3V
2.8V

0.5V
0.0V
Binary numbers
• Digits are 1 and 0
(a binary digit is called a bit)
1 = true
0 = false
• MSB –most significant bit
• LSB –least significant bit
MSB LSB
• Bit numbering: 1011001010011100
15 0

• A bit string could have different interpretations

Unsigned binary integers
• 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
Translating Binary to Decimal

Weighted positional notation shows how to

calculate the decimal value of each binary bit:
dec = (Dn-1 2n-1)  (Dn-2  2n-2)  ...  (D1  21)  (D0 
20)
D = binary digit

binary 00001001 = decimal 9:

(1  23) + (1  20) = 9
Translating Unsigned Decimal to Binary
• Repeatedly divide the decimal integer by 2. Each
remainder is a binary digit in the translated value:

37 = 100101
Binary addition
• Starting with the LSB, add each pair of digits,
include the carry if present.
Integer storage sizes

Standard sizes:

Practice: What is the largest unsigned integer that may be stored in 20 bits?
Large measurements
• Kilobyte (KB), 210 bytes
• Megabyte (MB), 220 bytes
• Gigabyte (GB), 230 bytes
• Terabyte (TB), 240 bytes
• Petabyte
• Exabyte
• Zettabyte
• Yottabyte
Hexadecimal integers
All values in memory are stored in binary. Because long
binary numbers are hard to read, we use hexadecimal
representation.
Translating binary to hexadecimal

• Each hexadecimal digit corresponds to 4 binary

bits.
• Example: Translate the binary integer
000101101010011110010100 to hexadecimal:
Converting hexadecimal to decimal
• Multiply each digit by its corresponding
power of 16:
dec = (D3  163) + (D2  162) + (D1  161) + (D0  160)

• Hex 1234 equals (1  163) + (2  162) + (3  161) + (4

 160), or decimal 4,660.

• Hex 3BA4 equals (3  163) + (11 * 162) + (10  161)

+ (4  160), or decimal 15,268.
Powers of 16

Used when calculating hexadecimal values up to

8 digits long:
Converting decimal to hexadecimal

decimal 422 = 1A6 hexadecimal

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

Important skill: Programmers frequently add and subtract the

addresses of variables and instructions.
Hexadecimal subtraction
When a borrow is required from the digit to the left,
add 10h to the current digit's value:

1
C6 75
A2 47
24 2E

Practice: The address of var1 is 00400020. The address of the next

variable after var1 is 0040006A. How many bytes are used by var1?
Signed integers
The highest bit indicates the sign. 1 = negative,
0 = positive

If the highest digit of a hexadecmal integer is > 7, the value is

negative. Examples: 8A, C5, A2, 9D
Two's complement notation
Steps:
– Complement (reverse) each bit
– Add 1

Note that 00000001 + 11111111 = 00000000

Binary subtraction
• When subtracting A – B, convert B to its two's
complement
• Add A to (–B)
01100 01100
– 00011 11101
01001
Advantages for 2’s complement:
• No two 0’s
• Sign bit
• Remove the need for separate circuits for add
and sub
Ranges of signed integers
The highest bit is reserved for the sign. This limits
the range:
Character
• Character sets
– Standard ASCII(0 – 127)
– Extended ASCII (0 – 255)
– ANSI (0 – 255)
– Unicode (0 – 65,535)
• Null-terminated String
– Array of characters followed by a null byte
• Using the ASCII table
– back inside cover of book
Representing Instructions
int sum(int x, int y)
{ Alpha sum Sun sum PC sum
return x+y; 00 81 55
} 00 C3 89
30 E0 E5
– For this example, Alpha & 42 08 8B
Sun use two 4-byte 01 90 45
instructions 80 02 0C
• Use differing numbers of FA 00 03
instructions in other cases 6B 09 45
08
– PC uses 7 instructions 89
with lengths 1, 2, and 3 EC
bytes 5D
• Same for NT and for Linux C3
• NT / Linux not fully binary Different machines use totally different
instructions and encodings
compatible
Boolean algebra
• Boolean expressions created from:
– NOT, AND, OR
NOT
• Inverts (reverses) a boolean value
• Truth table for Boolean NOT operator:

Digital gate diagram for NOT:

NOT
AND
• Truth if both are true
• Truth table for Boolean AND operator:

Digital gate diagram for AND:

AND
OR
• True if either is true
• Truth table for Boolean OR operator:

Digital gate diagram for OR:

OR
Operator precedence

• NOT > AND > OR

• Examples showing the order of operations:

• Use parentheses to avoid ambiguity

Implementation of gates
• Fluid switch (http://www.cs.princeton.edu/introcs/lectures/fluid-computer.swf)
Implementation of gates
Implementation of gates
Truth Tables (1 of 2)

• A Boolean function has one or more Boolean inputs,

and returns a single Boolean output.
• A truth table shows all the inputs and outputs of a
Boolean function

Example: X  Y
Truth Tables (2 of 2)

• Example: X  Y