Addressing Modes
• Immediate
• Direct
• Indirect
• Register
• Register Indirect
• Displacement (Indexed)
• Stack
Immediate Addressing
• Operand is part of instruction
• Operand = address field
• e.g. ADD 5
—Add 5 to contents of accumulator
—5 is operand
• No memory reference to fetch data
• Fast
• Limited range
Immediate Addressing Diagram
Instruction
Opcode Operand
Direct Addressing
• Address field contains address of operand
• Effective address (EA) = address field (A)
• e.g. ADD A
—Add contents of cell A to accumulator
—Look in memory at address A for operand
• Single memory reference to access data
• No additional calculations to work out
effective address
• Limited address space
Direct Addressing Diagram
Instruction
Opcode Address A
Memory
Operand
Indirect Addressing (1)
• Memory cell pointed to by address field
contains the address of (pointer to) the
operand
• EA = (A)
—Look in A, find address (A) and look there for
operand
• e.g. ADD (A)
—Add contents of cell pointed to by contents of
A to accumulator
Indirect Addressing (2)
• Large address space
• 2n where n = word length
• May be nested, multilevel, cascaded
—e.g. EA = (((A)))
– Draw the diagram yourself
• Multiple memory accesses to find operand
• Hence slower
Indirect Addressing Diagram
Instruction
Opcode Address A
Memory
Pointer to operand
Operand
Register Addressing (1)
• Operand is held in register named in
address filed
• EA = R
• Limited number of registers
• Very small address field needed
—Shorter instructions
—Faster instruction fetch
Register Addressing (2)
• No memory access
• Very fast execution
• Very limited address space
• Multiple registers helps performance
—Requires good assembly programming
—c.f. Direct addressing
Register Addressing Diagram
Instruction
Opcode Register Address R
Registers
Operand
Register Indirect Addressing
• C.f. indirect addressing
• EA = (R)
• Operand is in memory cell pointed to by
contents of register R
• Large address space (2n)
• One fewer memory access than indirect
addressing
Register Indirect Addressing Diagram
Instruction
Opcode Register Address R
Memory
Registers
Pointer to Operand Operand
Displacement Addressing
• EA = A + (R)
• Address field hold two values
—A = base value
—R = register that holds displacement
—or vice versa
Three of the most common uses of the
Displacement addressing
— Relative Addressing
— Base-register addressing
— Indexing
Displacement Addressing Diagram
Instruction
Opcode Register R Address A
Memory
Registers
Pointer to Operand + Operand
Relative Addressing
• A version of displacement addressing
• R = Program counter, PC
• EA = A + (PC)
• i.e. get operand from A cells from current
location pointed to by PC
• c.f locality of reference & cache usage
Base-Register Addressing
• R holds pointer to base address
• A holds displacement
• Displacement is an unsigned integer value
• The reference register may be explicit or
implicit
Indexed Addressing
• A = base
• R = displacement
• Register contains the positive displace
from that address
• EA = A + R
• Good for accessing arrays
—EA = A + R
—R++
Stack Addressing
• Stack LIFO
• A reserved block of Locations
• The value of stack pointer is the address
of the top of stack.
• Alternatively, top two elements of the
stack could be in process registers, then
stack pointer will point the third value.
• Operand is (implicitly) on top of stack
• e.g.
—ADD Pop top two items from stack
and add
Instruction Formats
• Instruction format defines the Layout of
bits in an instruction
• Includes opcode
• Includes (implicit or explicit) operand(s)
• Usually more than one instruction format
in an instruction set
Instruction Length
• Affected by and affects:
—Memory size
—Memory organization
—Bus structure
—CPU complexity
—CPU speed
Programmers want more opcodes, more
operands, more addressing modes and greater
address range which demands for long
instruction formats.
Allocation of Bits
• Following factors are involved in the
allocation of bits:
—Number of addressing modes
—Number of operands
—Register versus memory
—Number of register sets
– Most of the machines have a general purpose set of
32 of more registers.
– These sets of registers used to store data or
addresses.
—Address range
—Address granularity
– Address
Foreground Reading
• Stallings chapter 11
• Intel and ARM Web sites
