x86 Assembly/Print Version

Introduction

High performance: Since the early 2000s the most widely used processor architecture among supercomputers is based on x86.

Why Learn Assembly?

Assembly is among some of the oldest tools in a computer-programmer's toolbox. Nowadays though, entire software projects can be written without ever looking at a single line of assembly code. So this pops up the question: why learn assembly? Assembly language is one of the closest forms of communication that humans can engage in with a computer. With assembly, the programmer can precisely track the flow of data and execution in a program in a mostly human-readable form. Once a program has been compiled, it is difficult (and at times, nearly impossible) to reverse-engineer the code into its original form. As a result, if you wish to examine a program that is already compiled but would rather not stare at hexadecimal or binary, you will need to examine it in assembly language. Since debuggers will frequently only show program code in assembly language, this provides one of many benefits for learning the language.

Assembly language is also the preferred tool, if not the only tool, for implementing some low-level tasks, such as bootloaders and low-level kernel components. Code written in assembly has less overhead than code written in high-level languages, so assembly code frequently will run much faster than equivalent programs written in other languages. Also, code that is written in a high-level language can be compiled into assembly and "hand optimized" to squeeze every last bit of speed out of it. As hardware manufacturers such as Intel and AMD add new features and new instructions to their processors, often times the only way to access those features is to use assembly routines. That is, at least until the major compiler vendors add support for those features.

Developing a program in assembly can be a very time consuming process, however. While it might not be a good idea to write new projects in assembly language, it is certainly valuable to know a little bit about it.

Who is This Book For?

This book will serve as an introduction to assembly language and a good resource for people who already know about the topic, but need some more information on x86 system architecture. It will also describe some of the more advanced uses of x86 assembly language. All readers are encouraged to read (and contribute to) this book, although prior knowledge of programming fundamentals would definitely be beneficial.

How is This Book Organized?

The first section will discuss the x86 family of chips and introduce the basic instruction set. The second section will explain the differences between the syntax of different assemblers. The third section will go over some of the additional instruction sets available, including the floating point, MMX, and SSE operations.

The fourth section will cover some advanced topics in x86 assembly, including some low-level programming tasks such as writing bootloaders. There are many tasks that cannot be easily implemented in a higher-level language such as C or C++. For example, enabling and disabling interrupts, enabling protected mode, accessing the Control Registers, creating a Global Descriptor Table, and other tasks all need to be handled in assembly. The fourth section will also deal with interfacing assembly language with C and other high-level languages. Once a function is written in assembly (a function to enable protected mode, for instance), we can interface that function to a larger, C-based (or even C++ based) kernel. The fifth section will discuss the standard x86 chipset, cover the basic x86 computer architecture, and generally deal with the hardware side of things.

The current layout of the book is designed to give readers as much information as they need without going overboard. Readers who want to learn assembly language on a given assembler only need to read the first section and the chapter in the second section that directly relates to their assembler. Programmers looking to implement the MMX or SSE instructions for different algorithms only really need to read section 3. Programmers looking to implement bootloaders, kernels, or other low-level tasks, can read section 4. People who really want to get to the nitty-gritty of the x86 hardware design can continue reading on through section 5.

Basic FAQ

This page is going to serve as a basic FAQ for people who are new to assembly language programming.

How Does the Computer Read/Understand Assembly?

The computer doesn't really "read" or "understand" anything per se, since a computer has no awareness nor consciousness, but that's beside the point. The fact is that the computer cannot read the assembly language that you write. Your assembler will convert the assembly language into a form of binary information called "machine code" that your computer uses to perform its operations. If you don't assemble the code, it's complete gibberish to the computer.

That said, assembly is important because each assembly instruction usually relates to just a single machine code, and it is possible for "mere mortals" to do this task directly with nothing but a blank sheet of paper, a pencil, and an assembly instruction reference book. Indeed, in the early days of computers this was a common task and even required in some instances "hand assembling" machine instructions for some basic computer programs. A classical example of this was done by Steve Wozniak, when he hand assembled the entire Integer BASIC interpreter into 6502 machine code for use on his initial Apple I computer. It should be noted, however, that such tasks done for commercially distributed software are so rare that they deserve special mention from that fact alone. Very, very few programmers have actually done this for more than a few instructions, and even then only for a classroom assignment.

Is it the Same On Windows/DOS/Linux?

The answers to this question are yes and no. The basic x86 machine code is dependent only on the processor. The x86 versions of Windows and Linux are obviously built on the x86 machine code. There are a few differences between Linux and Windows programming in x86 Assembly:

1. On a Linux computer, the most popular assemblers are the GAS assembler, which uses the AT&T syntax for writing code, and the Netwide Assembler, also known as NASM, which uses a syntax similar to MASM.
2. On a Windows computer, the most popular assembler is MASM, which uses the Intel syntax but also, a lot of Windows users use NASM.
3. The available software interrupts, and their functions, are different on Windows and Linux.
4. The available code libraries are different on Windows and Linux.

Using the same assembler, the basic assembly code written on each Operating System is basically the same, except you interact with Windows differently than you interact with Linux.

Which Assembler is Best?

The short answer is that none of the assemblers is better than any other; it's a matter of personal preference.

The long answer is that different assemblers have different capabilities, drawbacks, etc. If you only know GAS syntax, then you will probably want to use GAS. If you know Intel syntax and are working on a Windows machine, you might want to use MASM. If you don't like some of the quirks or complexities of MASM and GAS, you might want to try FASM or NASM. We will cover the differences between the different assemblers in section 2.

Do I Need to Know Assembly?

You don't need to know assembly for most computer tasks, but it can definitely be useful. Learning assembly is not about learning a new programming language. If you are going to start a new programming project (unless that project is a bootloader, a device driver, or a kernel), then you will probably want to avoid assembly like the plague. An exception to this could be if you absolutely need to squeeze the last bits of performance out of a congested inner loop and your compiler is producing suboptimal code. Keep in mind, though, that premature optimization is the root of all evil, although some computing-intense realtime tasks can only be optimized sufficiently if optimization techniques are understood and planned for from the start.

However, learning assembly gives you a particular insight into how your computer works on the inside. When you program in a higher-level language like C or Ada, all your code will eventually need to be converted into machine code instructions so your computer can execute them. Understanding the limits of exactly what the processor can do, at the most basic level, will also help when programming a higher-level language.

How Should I Format my Code?

Most assemblers require that assembly code instructions each appear on their own line and are separated by a carriage return. Most assemblers also allow for whitespace to appear between instructions, operands, etc. Exactly how you format code is up to you, although there are some common ways:

One way keeps everything lined up:

Label1:
mov ax, bx
add ax, bx
jmp Label3
Label2:
mov ax, cx
...

Another way keeps all the labels in one column and all the instructions in another column:

Label1: mov ax, bx
        add ax, bx
        jmp Label3
Label2: mov ax, cx
...

Another way puts labels on their own lines and indents instructions slightly:

Label1:
   mov ax, bx
   add ax, bx
   jmp Label3
Label2:
   mov ax, cx
...

Yet another way separates labels and instructions into separate columns AND keeps labels on their own lines:

Label1:
        mov ax, bx
        add ax, bx
        jmp Label3
Label2:
        mov ax, cx
...

So there are different ways to do it, but there are some general rules that assembly programmers generally follow:

1. Make your labels obvious, so other programmers can see where they are.
2. More structure (indents) will make your code easier to read.
3. Use comments to explain what you are doing. The meaning of a piece of assembly code can often not be immediately clear.

X86 Family

The term "x86" can refer both to an instruction set architecture and to microprocessors which implement it. The name x86 is derived from the fact that many of Intel's early processors had names ending in "86".

The x86 instruction set architecture originated at Intel and has evolved over time by the addition of new instructions as well as the expansion to 64-bits. As of 2009, x86 primarily refers to IA-32 (Intel Architecture, 32-bit) and/or x86-64, the extension to 64-bit computing.

Versions of the x86 instruction set architecture have been implemented by Intel, AMD and several other vendors, with each vendor having its own family of x86 processors.

Intel x86 Microprocessors

8086/8087 (1978)

The 8086 was the original x86 microprocessor, with the 8087 as its floating-point coprocessor. The 8086 was Intel's first 16-bit microprocessor with a 20-bit address bus, thus enabling it to address up to 1 MiB, although the architecture of the original IBM PC imposed a limit of 640 KiB of RAM, with the remainder reserved for ROM and memory-mapped expansion cards, such as video memory. This limitation is still present in modern CPUs, since they all support the backward-compatible "Real Mode" and boot into it.

8088 (1979)

After the development of the 8086, Intel also created the lower-cost 8088. The 8088 was similar to the 8086, but with an 8-bit data bus instead of a 16-bit bus. The address bus was left untouched.

80186/80187 (1982)

The 186 was the second Intel chip in the family; the 80187 was its floating point coprocessor. Except for the addition of some new instructions, optimization of some old ones, and an increase in the clock speed, this processor was identical to the 8086.

80286/80287 (1982)

The 286 was the third model in the family; the 80287 was its floating point coprocessor. The 286 introduced the “Protected Mode” mode of operation, in addition to the “Real Mode” that the earlier models used. All subsequent x86 chips can also be made to run in real mode or in protected mode. Switching back from protected mode to real mode was initially not supported, but found to be possible (although relatively slow) by resetting the CPU, then continuing in real mode. Although the processor featured an address bus with 24 lines (24 bits, thus enabling to address up to 16 MiB), these could only be used in protected mode. In real mode, the processor was still limited to the 20-bits address bus.

80386 (1985)

The 386 was the fourth model in the family. It was the first Intel microprocessor with a 32-bit word. The 386DX model was the original 386 chip, and the 386SX model was an economy model that used the same instruction set, but which only had a 16-bit data bus. Both featured a 32-bits address bus, thus getting rid of the segmented addressing methods used in the previous models and enabling a "flat" memory model, where one register can hold an entire address, instead of relying on two 16-bit registers to create a 20-bit/24-bit address. The flat memory layout was only supported in protected mode. Also, contrary to the 286, it featured an "unreal mode" in which protected-mode software could switch to perform real-mode operations (although this backward compatibility was not complete, as the physical memory was still protected). The 386EX model is still used today in embedded systems,

80486 (1989)

The 486 was the fifth model in the family. It had an integrated floating point unit for the first time in x86 history. Early model 80486 DX chips were found to have defective FPUs. They were physically modified to disconnect the FPU portion of the chip and sold as the 486SX (486-SX15, 486-SX20, and 486-SX25). A 487 "math coprocessor" was available to 486SX users and was essentially a 486DX with a working FPU and an extra pin added. The arrival of the 486DX-50 processor saw the widespread introduction of fan assisted heat-sinks being used to keep the processors from overheating.

Pentium (1993)

Intel called it the “Pentium” because they couldn't trademark the code number “80586”. The original Pentium was a faster chip than the 486 with a few other enhancements; later models also integrated the MMX instruction set.

Pentium Pro (1995)

The Pentium Pro was the sixth-generation architecture microprocessor, originally intended to replace the original Pentium in a full range of applications, but later reduced to a more narrow role as a server and high-end desktop chip.

Pentium II (1997)

The Pentium II was based on a modified version of the P6 core first used for the Pentium Pro, but with improved 16-bit performance and the addition of the MMX SIMD instruction set, which had already been introduced on the Pentium MMX.

Pentium III (1999)

Initial versions of the Pentium III were very similar to the earlier Pentium II, the most notable difference being the addition of SSE instructions.

Pentium 4 (2000)

The Pentium 4 had a new 7th generation "NetBurst" architecture. Pentium 4 chips also introduced the notions “Hyper-Threading”, and “Multi-Core” chips.

Core (2006)

The architecture of the Core processors was actually an even more advanced version of the 6th generation architecture dating back to the 1995 Pentium Pro. The limitations of the NetBurst architecture, especially in mobile applications, were too great to justify creation of more NetBurst processors. The Core processors were designed to operate more efficiently with a lower clock speed. All Core branded processors had two processing cores; the Core Solos had one core disabled, while the Core Duos used both processors.

Core 2 (2006)

An upgraded, 64-bit version of the Core architecture. All desktop versions are multi-core.

i Series (2008)

The successor to Core 2 processors, with the i7 line featuring Hyper-Threading.

Celeron (first model 1998)

The Celeron chip is actually a large number of different chip designs, depending on price. Celeron chips are the economy line of chips, and are frequently cheaper than the Pentium chips—even if the Celeron model in question is based off a Pentium architecture.

Xeon (first model 1998)

The Xeon processors are modern Intel processors made for servers, which have a much larger cache (measured in MiB in comparison to other chips' KiB-sized cache) than the Pentium microprocessors.

AMD x86 Compatible Microprocessors

Athlon

Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of different x86 processors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon, or Athlon Classic, was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and, in a first, retained the initial performance lead it had over Intel's competing processors for a significant period of time.

Turion

Turion 64 is the brand name AMD applies to its 64-bit low-power (mobile) processors. Turion 64 processors (but not Turion 64 X2 processors) are compatible with AMD's Socket 754 and are equipped with 512 or 1024 KiB of L2 cache, a 64-bit single channel on-die memory controller, and an 800 MHz HyperTransport bus.

Duron

The AMD Duron was an x86-compatible computer processor manufactured by AMD. It was released as a low-cost alternative to AMD's own Athlon processor and the Pentium III and Celeron processor lines from rival Intel.

Sempron

Sempron is, as of 2006, AMD's entry-level desktop CPU, replacing the Duron processor and competing against Intel's Celeron D processor.

Opteron

The AMD Opteron is the first eighth-generation x86 processor (K8 core), and the first of AMD's AMD64 (x86-64) processors. It is intended to compete in the server market, particularly in the same segment as the Intel Xeon processor.

X86 Architecture

x86 Architecture

The x86 architecture has 8 General-Purpose Registers (GPR), 6 Segment Registers, 1 Flags Register and an Instruction Pointer. 64-bit x86 has additional registers.

General-Purpose Registers (GPR) - 16-bit naming conventions

The 8 GPRs are as follows:

1. Accumulator register (AX). Used in arithmetic operations. Opcodes combining constants into accumulator are 1-byte.
2. Base register (BX). Used as a pointer to data (located in segment register DS, when in segmented mode).
3. Counter register (CX). Used in shift/rotate instructions and loops.
4. Stack Pointer register (SP). Pointer to the top of the stack.
5. Stack Base Pointer register (BP). Used to point to the base of the stack.
6. Destination Index register (DI). Used as a pointer to a destination in stream operations.
7. Source Index register (SI). Used as a pointer to a source in stream operations.
8. Data register (DX). Used in arithmetic operations and I/O operations.

The order in which they are listed here is for a reason: it is the same order that is used in a push-to-stack operation, which will be covered later.

All registers can be accessed in 16-bit and 32-bit modes. In 16-bit mode, the register is identified by its two-letter abbreviation from the list above. In 32-bit mode, this two-letter abbreviation is prefixed with an 'E' (extended). For example, 'EAX' is the accumulator register as a 32-bit value.

Similarly, in the 64-bit version, the 'E' is replaced with an 'R' (register), so the 64-bit version of 'EAX' is called 'RAX'.

It is also possible to address the first four registers (AX, CX, DX and BX) in their size of 16-bit as two 8-bit halves. The least significant byte (LSB), or low half, is identified by replacing the 'X' with an 'L'. The most significant byte (MSB), or high half, uses an 'H' instead. For example, CL is the LSB of the counter register, whereas CH is its MSB.

In total, this gives us five ways to access the accumulator, counter, data and base registers: 64-bit, 32-bit, 16-bit, 8-bit LSB, and 8-bit MSB. The other four are accessed in only four ways: 64-bit, 32-bit, 16-bit, and 8-bit. The following table summarises this:

identifiers to access registers and parts thereof

Register	Accumulator								Base								Counter								Stack Pointer								Stack Base Pointer								Destination								Source								Data
64-bit	RAX								RBX								RCX								RSP								RBP								RDI								RSI								RDX
32-bit					EAX								EBX								ECX								ESP								EBP								EDI								ESI								EDX
16-bit							AX								BX								CX								SP								BP								DI								SI								DX
8-bit							AH	AL							BH	BL							CH	CL								SPL								BPL								DIL								SIL							DH	DL

Segment Registers

The 6 Segment Registers are:

• Stack Segment (SS). Pointer to the stack ('S' stands for 'Stack').
• Code Segment (CS). Pointer to the code ('C' stands for 'Code').
• Data Segment (DS). Pointer to the data ('D' stands for 'Data').
• Extra Segment (ES). Pointer to extra data ('E' stands for 'Extra'; 'E' comes after 'D').
• F Segment (FS). Pointer to more extra data ('F' comes after 'E').
• G Segment (GS). Pointer to still more extra data ('G' comes after 'F').

Most applications on most modern operating systems (like FreeBSD, Linux or Microsoft Windows) use a memory model that points nearly all segment registers to the same place (and uses paging instead), effectively disabling their use. Typically the use of FS or GS is an exception to this rule, instead being used to point at thread-specific data.

EFLAGS Register

The EFLAGS is a 32-bit register used as a collection of bits representing Boolean values to store the results of operations and the state of the processor.

The names of these bits are:

31	30	29	28	27	26	25	24	23	22	21	20	19	18	17	16
0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	ID	VIP	VIF	AC	VM	RF
15	14	13	12	11	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	0
0	NT	IOPL		OF	DF	IF	TF	SF	ZF	0	AF	0	PF	1	CF

The bits named 0 and 1 are reserved bits and shouldn't be modified.

The different use of these flags are:
0.	CF : Carry Flag. Set if the last arithmetic operation carried (addition) or borrowed (subtraction) a bit beyond the size of the register. This is then checked when the operation is followed with an add-with-carry or subtract-with-borrow to deal with values too large for just one register to contain.
2.	PF : Parity Flag. Set if the number of set bits in the least significant byte is a multiple of 2.
4.	AF : Adjust Flag. Carry of Binary Code Decimal (BCD) numbers arithmetic operations.
6.	ZF : Zero Flag. Set if the result of an operation is Zero (0).
7.	SF : Sign Flag. Set if the result of an operation is negative.
8.	TF : Trap Flag. Set if step by step debugging.
9.	IF : Interruption Flag. Set if interrupts are enabled.
10.	DF : Direction Flag. Stream direction. If set, string operations will decrement their pointer rather than incrementing it, reading memory backwards.
11.	OF : Overflow Flag. Set if signed arithmetic operations result in a value too large for the register to contain.
12-13.	IOPL : I/O Privilege Level field (2 bits). I/O Privilege Level of the current process.
14.	NT : Nested Task flag. Controls chaining of interrupts. Set if the current process is linked to the next process.
16.	RF : Resume Flag. Response to debug exceptions.
17.	VM : Virtual-8086 Mode. Set if in 8086 compatibility mode.
18.	AC : Alignment Check. Set if alignment checking of memory references is done.
19.	VIF : Virtual Interrupt Flag. Virtual image of IF.
20.	VIP : Virtual Interrupt Pending flag. Set if an interrupt is pending.
21.	ID : Identification Flag. Support for CPUID instruction if can be set.

Instruction Pointer

The EIP register contains the address of the next instruction to be executed if no branching is done.

EIP can only be read through the stack after a call instruction.

Memory

The x86 architecture is little-endian, meaning that multi-byte values are written least significant byte first. (This refers only to the ordering of the bytes, not to the bits.)

So the 32 bit value B3B2B1B0₁₆ on an x86 would be represented in memory as:

Little endian representation

B0

B1

B2

B3

For example, the 32 bits double word 0x1BA583D4 (the 0x denotes hexadecimal) would be written in memory as:

Little endian example

D4

83

A5

1B

This will be seen as 0xD4 0x83 0xA5 0x1B when doing a memory dump.

Two's Complement Representation

Two's complement is the standard way of representing negative integers in binary. The sign is changed by inverting all of the bits and adding one.

Two's complement example

Start:	0001
Invert:	1110
Add One:	1111

0001 represents decimal 1

1111 represents decimal -1

Addressing modes

In x86 assembly language, addressing modes determine how memory operands are specified in instructions. Addressing modes allow the programmer to access data from memory or perform operations on operands effectively. The x86 architecture supports various addressing modes, each offering different ways to reference memory or registers. Here are some common addressing modes in x86:

Register Addressing

(operand address R is in the address field)

mov ax, bx  ; moves contents of register bx into ax

Immediate

(actual value is in the field)

mov ax, 1   ; moves value of 1 into register ax

or

mov ax, 010Ch ; moves value of 0x010C into register ax

Direct memory addressing

(operand address is in the address field)

.data
my_var dw 0abcdh ; my_var = 0xabcd
.code
mov ax, [my_var] ; copy my_var content into ax (ax=0xabcd)

Direct offset addressing

(uses arithmetics to modify address)

byte_table db 12, 15, 16, 22 ; table of bytes
mov al, [byte_table + 2]
mov al, byte_table[2] ; same as previous instruction

Register Indirect

(field points to a register that contains the operand address)

mov ax, [di]

The registers used for indirect addressing are BX, BP, SI, DI

General-purpose registers (64-bit naming conventions)

Main article: X86 Assembly/16, 32, and 64 Bits

Main article: X86 Assembly/SSE

64-bit x86 adds 8 more general-purpose registers, named R8, R9, R10 and so on up to R15.

• R8–R15 are the new 64-bit registers.
• R8D–R15D are the lowermost 32 bits of each register.
• R8W–R15W are the lowermost 16 bits of each register.
• R8B–R15B are the lowermost 8 bits of each register.

As well, 64-bit x86 includes SSE2, so each 64-bit x86 CPU has at least 8 registers (named XMM0–XMM7) that are 128 bits wide, but only accessible through SSE instructions. They cannot be used for quadruple-precision (128-bit) floating-point arithmetic, but they can each hold 2 double-precision or 4 single-precision floating-point values for a SIMD parallel instruction. They can also be operated on as 128-bit integers or vectors of shorter integers. If the processor supports AVX, as newer Intel and AMD desktop CPUs do, then each of these registers is actually the lower half of a 256-bit register (named YMM0–YMM7), the whole of which can be accessed with AVX instructions for further parallelization.

Stack

The stack is a Last In First Out (LIFO) data structure; data is pushed onto it and popped off of it in the reverse order.

mov ax, 006Ah
mov bx, F79Ah
mov cx, 1124h

push ax ; push the value in AX onto the top of the stack, which now holds the value 0x006A.
push bx ; do the same thing to the value in BX; the stack now has 0x006A and 0xF79A.
push cx ; now the stack has 0x006A, 0xF79A, and 0x1124.

call do_stuff ; do some stuff. The function is not forced to save the registers it uses, hence us saving them.

pop cx ; pop the element on top of the stack, 0x1124, into CX; the stack now has 0x006A and 0xF79A.
pop bx ; pop the element on top of the stack, 0xF79A, into BX; the stack now has just 0x006A.
pop ax ; pop the element on top of the stack, 0x006A, into AX; the stack is now empty.

The Stack is usually used to pass arguments to functions or procedures and also to keep track of control flow when the call instruction is used. The other common use of the Stack is temporarily saving registers.

CPU Operation Modes

Real Mode

Real Mode is a holdover from the original Intel 8086. You generally won't need to know anything about it (unless you are programming for a DOS-based system or, more likely, writing a boot loader that is directly called by the BIOS).

The Intel 8086 accessed memory using 20-bit addresses. But, as the processor itself was 16-bit, Intel invented an addressing scheme that provided a way of mapping a 20-bit addressing space into 16-bit words. Today's x86 processors start in the so-called Real Mode, which is an operating mode that mimics the behavior of the 8086, with some very tiny differences, for backwards compatibility.

In Real Mode, a segment and an offset register are used together to yield a final memory address. The value in the segment register is multiplied by 16 (shifted 4 bits to the left) and the offset is added to the result. This provides a usable address space of 1 MB. However, a quirk in the addressing scheme allows access past the 1 MB limit if a segment address of 0xFFFF (the highest possible) is used; on the 8086 and 8088, all accesses to this area wrapped around to the low end of memory, but on the 80286 and later, up to 65520 bytes past the 1 MB mark can be addressed this way if the A20 address line is enabled. See: The A20 Gate Saga.

One benefit shared by Real Mode segmentation and by Protected Mode Multi-Segment Memory Model is that all addresses must be given relative to another address (this is, the segment base address). A program can have its own address space and completely ignore the segment registers, and thus no pointers have to be relocated to run the program. Programs can perform near calls and jumps within the same segment, and data is always relative to segment base addresses (which in the Real Mode addressing scheme are computed from the values loaded in the Segment Registers).

This is what the DOS *.COM format does; the contents of the file are loaded into memory and blindly run. However, due to the fact that Real Mode segments are always 64 KB long, COM files could not be larger than that (in fact, they had to fit into 65280 bytes, since DOS used the first 256 bytes of a segment for housekeeping data); for many years this wasn't a problem.

Protected Mode

Flat Memory Model

If programming in a modern 32-bit operating system (such as Linux, Windows), you are basically programming in flat 32-bit mode. Any register can be used in addressing, and it is generally more efficient to use a full 32-bit register instead of a 16-bit register part. Additionally, segment registers are generally unused in flat mode, and using them in flat mode is not considered best practice.

Multi-Segmented Memory Model

Using a 32-bit register to address memory, the program can access (almost) all of the memory in a modern computer. For earlier processors (with only 16-bit registers) the segmented memory model was used. The 'CS', 'DS', and 'ES' registers are used to point to the different chunks of memory. For a small program (small model) the CS=DS=ES. For larger memory models, these 'segments' can point to different locations.

Long Mode

The term "Long Mode" refers to the 64-bit mode.

Comments

When writing code, it is very helpful to use some comments explaining what is going on, and particularly why. Sometimes why means repeating drawn conclusions, that, for instance, at one point it has been established as knowledge that data meet certain criteria.

A comment is a piece of regular text that the assembler just discards when turning assembly code into machine code. In assembly, comments are usually denoted by a semicolon ;, although GAS uses # for single line comments and /* … */ for block comments possibly spanning multiple lines.

Here is an example:

	xor rax, rax                          ; rax ≔ false
	
	; divisibility by four
	test rcx, 3                           ; are the two right-most bits set?
	jnz done                              ; yes ⇒ not divisible by 4
	
	setz al                               ; al ≔ ZF  [i.e. `true`, since `jnz` above]
	…

Everything after the semicolon, on the same line, is ignored.

Sometimes, during debugging, regular comments can be used to track down bugs, that means errors in programs that cause unexpected and undesired behavior. For that, actual source code is commented out:

Label1:
	mov ax, bx
	;mov cx, ax   ; possibly _overwriting_ some needed value?
	…

Here, the assembler never sees the second instruction mov cx, ax, because it ignores everything after the semicolon.

HLA Comments

The HLA assembler also has the ability to write comments in C or C++ style, but we cannot use the semicolons. This is because in HLA, the semicolons are used at the end of every instruction:

mov(ax, bx); // This is a C++ comment.
/*mov(cx, ax);  everything between the slash-stars is commented out. 
                This is a C comment*/

C++ comments go all the way to the end of the line, but C comments go on for many lines from the "/*" all the way until the "*/". For a better understanding of C and C++ comments in HLA, see Programming:C or the C++ Wikibooks.

16 32 and 64 Bits

When using x86 assembly, it is important to consider the differences between architectures that are 16, 32, and 64 bits. This page will talk about some of the basic differences between architectures with different bit widths.

Registers

16-bit

The registers found on the 8086 and all subsequent x86 processors are the following: AX, BX, CX, DX, SP, BP, SI, DI, CS, DS, SS, ES, IP and FLAGS. These are all 16 bits wide.

On DOS and up to 32-bit Windows, you can run a very handy program called "debug.exe" from a DOS shell, which is very useful for learning about 8086. If you are using DOSBox or FreeDOS, you can use "debug.exe" as provided by FreeDOS.

AX, BX, CX, DX

These general purpose registers can also be addressed as 8-bit registers. So AX = AH (high 8-bit) and AL (low 8-bit).

SI, DI

These registers are usually used as offsets into data space. By default, SI is offset from the DS data segment, DI is offset from the ES extra segment, but either or both of these can be overridden.

SP

This is the stack pointer, offset usually from the stack segment SS. Data is pushed onto the stack for temporary storage, and popped off the stack when it is needed again.

BP

The stack frame, usually treated as an offset from the stack segment SS. Parameters for subroutines are commonly pushed onto the stack when the subroutine is called, and BP is set to the value of SP when a subroutine starts. BP can then be used to find the parameters on the stack, no matter how much the stack is used in the meanwhile.

CS, DS, SS, ES

The segment pointers. These are the offset in memory of the current code segment, data segment, stack segment and extra segment respectively.

IP

The instruction pointer. Offset from the code segment CS, this points at the instruction currently being executed.

FLAGS (F)

A number of single-bit flags that indicate (or sometimes set) the current status of the processor.

32-bit

With the chips beginning to support a 32-bit data bus, the registers were also widened to 32 bits. The names for the 32-bit registers are simply the 16-bit names with an 'E' prepended.

EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX, ESP, EBP, ESI, EDI

These are the 32-bit versions of the registers shown above.

EIP

The 32-bit version of IP. Always use this instead of IP on 32-bit systems.

EFLAGS

An expanded version of the 16-bit FLAGS register.

64-bit

The names of the 64-bit registers are the same of those of the 32-bit registers, except beginning with an 'R'.

RAX, RBX, RCX, RDX, RSP, RBP, RSI, RDI

These are the 64-bit versions of the registers shown above.

RIP

This is the full 64-bit instruction pointer and should be used instead of EIP (which will be inaccurate if the address space is larger than 4 GiB, which may happen even with 4 GiB or less of RAM).

R8–15

These are new extra registers for 64-bit. They are counted as if the registers above are registers zero through seven, inclusively, rather than one through eight.

R8–R15 can be accessed as 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit registers. Using R8 as an example, the names corresponding to those widths are R8B, R8W, and R8D, respectively. 64-bit versions of x86 also allow the low byte of RSP, RBP, RSI, RDI to be accessed directly. For example, the low byte of RSP can be accessed using SPL. There is no way to directly access bits 8–15 of those registers, as AH allows for AX.

128-bit, 256-bit and 512-bit (SSE/AVX)

64-bit x86 includes SSE2 (an extension to 32-bit x86), which provides 128-bit registers for specific instructions. Most CPUs made since 2011 also have AVX, a further extension that lengthens these registers to 256 bits. Some also have AVX-512, which lengthens them to 512 bits and adds 16 more registers.

XMM0~7

SSE2 and newer.

XMM8~15

SSE3 and newer and AMD (but not Intel) SSE2.

YMM0~15

AVX. Each YMM register includes the corresponding XMM register as its lower half.

ZMM0~15

AVX-512F. Each ZMM register includes the corresponding YMM register as its lower half.

ZMM16~31

AVX-512F. 512-bit registers that are not addressable in narrower modes unless AVX-512VL is implemented.

XMM16~31

AVX-512VL. Each is the lower quarter of the corresponding ZMM register.

YMM16~31

AVX-512VL. Each is the lower half of the corresponding ZMM register.

Addressing memory

8086 and 80186

The original 8086 only had registers that were 16 bits in size, effectively allowing to store one value of the range [0 - (2¹⁶ - 1)] (or simpler: it could address up to 65536 different bytes, or 64 kibibytes) - but the address bus (the connection to the memory controller, which receives addresses, then loads the content from the given address, and returns the data back on the data bus to the CPU) was 20 bits in size, effectively allowing to address up to 1 mebibyte of memory. That means that all registers by themselves were not large enough to make use of the entire width of the address bus, leaving 4 bits unused, scaling down the number of usable addresses by 16 (1024 KiB / 64 KiB = 16).

The problem was this: how can a 20-bit address space be referred to by the 16-bit registers? To solve this problem, the engineers of Intel came up with segment registers CS (Code Segment), DS (Data Segment), ES (Extra Segment), and SS (Stack Segment). To convert from 20-bit address, one would first divide it by 16 and place the quotient in the segment register and remainder in the offset register. This was represented as CS:IP (this means, CS is the segment and IP is the offset). Likewise, when an address is written SS:SP it means SS is the segment and SP is the offset.

This works also the reversed way. If one was, instead of convert from, to create a 20 bit address, it would be done by taking the 16-bit value of a segment register and put it on the address bus, but shifted 4 times to the left (thus effectively multiplying the register by 16), and then by adding the offset from another register untouched to the value on the bus, thus creating a full 20-bit address.

Example

If CS = 258C and IP = 0012₁₆, then CS:IP will point to a 20 bit address equivalent to "CS × 16 + IP" which will be

258C × 10₁₆ + 0012₁₆ = 258C0 + 0012₁₆ = 258D2 (Remember: 16 decimal = 10₁₆).

The 20-bit address is known as an absolute (or linear) address and the Segment:Offset representation (CS:IP) is known as a segmented address. This separation was necessary, as the register itself could not hold values that required more than 16 bits encoding. When programming in protected mode on a 32-bit or 64-bit processor, the registers are big enough to fill the address bus entirely, thus eliminating segmented addresses - only linear/logical addresses are generally used in this "flat addressing" mode, although the Segment:Offset architecture is still supported for backwards compatibility.

It is important to note that there is not a one-to-one mapping of physical addresses to segmented addresses; for any physical address, there is more than one possible segmented address. For example: consider the segmented representations B000:8000 and B200:6000. Evaluated, they both map to physical address B8000.

B000:8000 = B000 × 10₁₆ + 8000₁₆ = B0000 + 8000₁₆ = B8000, and

B200:6000 = B200 × 10₁₆ + 6000₁₆ = B2000 + 6000₁₆ = B8000.

However, using an appropriate mapping scheme avoids this problem: such a map applies a linear transformation to the physical addresses to create precisely one segmented address for each. To reverse the translation, the map [f(x)] is simply inverted.

For example, if the segment portion is equal to the physical address divided by 10₁₆ and the offset is equal to the remainder, only one segmented address will be generated. (No offset will be greater than 0F₁₆.) Physical address B8000 maps to (B8000 / 10₁₆):(B8000 mod 10₁₆) or B800:0. This segmented representation is given a special name: such addresses are said to be "normalized Addresses".

CS:IP (Code Segment: Instruction Pointer) represents the 20-bit address of the physical memory from where the next instruction for execution will be picked up. Likewise, SS:SP (Stack Segment: Stack Pointer) points to a 20-bit absolute address which will be treated as stack top (8086 uses this for pushing/popping values).

Protected Mode (80286+)

As ugly as this may seem, it was in fact a step towards the protected addressing scheme used in later chips. The 80286 had a protected mode of operation, in which all 24 of its address lines were available, allowing for addressing of up to 16 MiB of memory. In protected mode, the CS, DS, ES, and SS registers were not segments but selectors, pointing into a table that provided information about the blocks of physical memory that the program was then using. In this mode, the pointer value CS:IP = 0010:2400 is used as follows:

The CS value 0010₁₆ is an offset into the selector table, pointing at a specific selector. This selector would have a 24-bit value to indicate the start of a memory block, a 16-bit value to indicate how long the block is, and flags to specify whether the block can be written, whether it is currently physically in memory, and other information. Let's say that the memory block pointed to actually starts at the 24-bit address 164400₁₆, the actual address referred to then is 164400₁₆ + 2400₁₆ = 166800₁₆. If the selector also includes information that the block is 2400₁₆ bytes long, the reference would be to the byte immediately following that block, which would cause an exception: the operating system should not allow a program to read memory that it does not own. And if the block is marked as read-only, which code segment memory should be so that programs don't overwrite themselves, an attempt to write to that address would similarly cause an exception.

With CS and IP being expanded to 32 bits in the 386, this scheme became unnecessary; with a selector pointing at physical address 00000000₁₆, a 32-bit register could address up to 4 GiB of memory. However, selectors are still used to protect memory from rogue programs. If a program in Windows tries to read or write memory that it doesn't own, for instance, it will violate the rules set by the selectors, triggering an exception, and Windows will shut it down with the "General protection fault" message.

32-Bit Addressing

32-bit addresses can cover memory up to 4 GiB in size. This means that we don't need to use offset addresses in 32-bit processors. Instead, we use what is called the "Flat addressing" scheme, where the address in the register directly points to a physical memory location. The segment registers are used to define different segments, so that programs don't try to execute the stack section, and they don't try to perform stack operations on the data section accidentally.

The A20 Gate Saga

As was said earlier, the 8086 processor had 20 address lines (from A0 to A19), so the total memory addressable by it was 1 MiB (or 2 to the power 20). But since it had only 16 bit registers, they came up with Segment:Offset scheme or else using a single 16-bit register they couldn't have possibly accessed more than 64 KiB (or 2 to the power 16) of memory. So this made it possible for a program to access the whole of 1 MiB of memory.

But with this segmentation scheme also came a side effect. Not only could your code refer to the whole of 1 MiB with this scheme, but actually a little more than that. Let's see how ....

Let's keep in mind how we convert from a Segment:Offset representation to Linear 20 bit representation.

The conversion:

Segment:Offset = Segment × 16 + Offset.

Now to see the maximum amount of memory that can be addressed, let's fill in both Segment and Offset to their maximum values and then convert that value to its 20-bit absolute physical address.

So, max value for Segment = FFFF₁₆, and max value for Offset = FFFF₁₆.

Now, let's convert FFFF:FFFF into its 20-bit linear address, bearing in mind 16₁₀ is represented as 10 in hexadecimal.

So we get, FFFF:FFFF -> FFFF × 10₁₆ + FFFF = FFFF0 (1 MiB - 16 bytes) + FFFF (64 KiB) = FFFFF + FFF0 = 1 MiB + FFF0 bytes.

• Note: FFFFF is hexadecimal and is equal to 1 MiB and FFF0 is equal to 64 KiB minus 16 bytes.

Moral of the story: From Real mode a program can actually refer to (1 MiB + 64 KiB - 16) bytes of memory.

Notice the use of the word "refer" and not "access". A program can refer to this much memory but whether it can access it or not is dependent on the number of address lines actually present. So with the 8086 this was definitely not possible because when programs made references to 1 MiB plus memory, the address that was put on the address lines was actually more than 20-bits, and this resulted in wrapping around of the addresses.

For example, if a code is referring to 1 MiB, this will get wrapped around and point to location 0 in memory, likewise 1 MiB + 1 will wrap around to address 1 (or 0000:0001).

Now there were some super funky programmers around that time who manipulated this feature in their code, that the addresses get wrapped around and made their code a little faster and a few bytes shorter. Using this technique it was possible for them to access 32 KiB of top memory area (that is 32 KiB touching 1 MiB boundary) and 32 KiB memory of the bottom memory area, without actually reloading their segment registers!

Simple maths you see, if in Segment:Offset representation you make Segment constant, then since Offset is a 16-bit value therefore you can roam around in a 64 KiB (or 2 to the power 16) area of memory. Now if you make your segment register point to 32 KiB below the 1 MiB mark you can access 32 KiB upwards to touch 1 MiB boundary and then 32 KiB further which will ultimately get wrapped to the bottom most 32 KiB.

Now these super funky programmers overlooked the fact that processors with more address lines would be created. (Note: Bill Gates has been attributed with saying, "Who would need more than 640 KB memory?", and these programmers were probably thinking similarly.) In 1982, just 2 years after 8086, Intel released the 80286 processor with 24 address lines. Though it was theoretically backward compatible with legacy 8086 programs, since it also supported Real Mode, many 8086 programs did not function correctly because they depended on out-of-bounds addresses getting wrapped around to lower memory segments. So for the sake of compatibility IBM engineers routed the A20 address line (8086 had lines A0 - A19) through the Keyboard controller and provided a mechanism to enable/disable the A20 compatibility mode. Now if you are wondering why the keyboard controller, the answer is that it had an unused pin. Since the 80286 would have been marketed as having complete compatibility with the 8086 (that wasn't even yet out very long), upgraded customers would be furious if the 80286 was not bug-for-bug compatible such that code designed for the 8086 would operate just as well on the 80286, but faster.

X86 Instructions

These pages will discuss, in detail, the different instructions available in the basic x86 instruction set. For ease, and to decrease the page size, the different instructions will be broken up into groups, and discussed individually.

• Data Transfer Instructions
• Control Flow Instructions
• Arithmetic Instructions
• Logic Instructions
• Shift and Rotate Instructions
• Other Instructions
• x86 Interrupts

For more info, see the resources section.

Conventions

The following template will be used for instructions that take no operands:

Instr

The following template will be used for instructions that take 1 operand:

Instr arg

The following template will be used for instructions that take 2 operands. Notice how the format of the instruction is different for different assemblers.

Instr src, dest	GAS Syntax
Instr dest, src	Intel Syntax

The following template will be used for instructions that take 3 operands. Notice how the format of the instruction is different for different assemblers.

Instr aux, src, dest	GAS Syntax
Instr dest, src, aux	Intel Syntax

Suffixes

Some instructions, especially when built for non-Windows platforms (i.e. Unix, Linux, etc.), require the use of suffixes to specify the size of the data which will be the subject of the operation. Some possible suffixes are:

• b (byte) = 8 bits.
• w (word) = 16 bits.
• l (long) = 32 bits.
• q (quad) = 64 bits.

An example of the usage with the mov instruction on a 32-bit architecture, GAS syntax:

movl $0x000F, %eax  # Store the value F into the eax register

On Intel Syntax you don't have to use the suffix. Based on the register name and the used immediate value the compiler knows which data size to use.

MOV EAX, 0x000F

Data Transfer

Some of the most important and most frequently used instructions are those that move data. Without them, there would be no way for registers or memory to even have anything in them to operate on.

Data transfer instructions

Move

mov src, dest	GAS Syntax
mov dest, src	Intel Syntax

mov stands for move. Despite its name the mov instruction copies the src operand into the dest operand. After the operation both operands contain the same contents.

Operands

legal operands for mov instruction

src operand			dest operand
immediate value	register	memory
Yes (into larger register)	Yes (same size)	Yes (register determines size of retrieved memory)	register
Yes (up to 32-bit values)	Yes	No	memory

Modified flags

• No FLAGS are modified by this instruction

Example

.data
value:
	.long 2

.text
	.globl _start

_start:
	movl $6, %eax                         # eax ≔ 6
	                                      #  └───────┐
	movw %eax, value                      # value ≔ eax
	                                      #   └───────────┐
	movl $0, %ebx                         # ebx ≔ 0  │    │
	                                      #       ┌──┘    │
	movb %al, %bl                         # bl ≔ al       │
	                                      # %ebx is now 6 │
	                                      #         ┌─────┘
	movl value, %ebx                      # ebx ≔ value
	
	movl $value, %esi                     # esi ≔ @value
	# %esi is now the address of value
	
	xorl %ebx, %ebx                       # ebx ≔ ebx ⊻ ebx
	                                      # %ebx is now 0
	
	movw value(, %ebx, 1), %bx            # bx ≔ value[ebx*1]
	                                      # %ebx is now 6
	
# Linux sys_exit
	movl $1, %eax                         # eax ≔ 1
	xorl %ebx, %ebx                       # ebx ≔ 0
	int $0x80

Data swap

xchg src, dest	GAS Syntax
xchg dest, src	Intel Syntax

xchg stands for exchange. The xchg instruction swaps the src operand with the dest operand. It is like doing three mov operations:

1. from dest to a temporary (another register),
2. then from src to dest, and finally
3. from the temporary storage to src,

except that no register needs to be reserved for temporary storage.

This exchange pattern of three consecutive mov instructions can be detected by the DFU present in some architectures, which will trigger special treatment. The opcode for xchg is shorter though.

Operands

Any combination of register or memory operands, except that at most one operand may be a memory operand. You cannot exchange two memory blocks.

Modified Flags

None.

Example

 .data
 
 value:
        .long   2
 
 .text
        .global _start
 
 _start:
        movl    $54, %ebx
        xorl    %eax, %eax
 
        xchgl   value, %ebx
        # %ebx is now 2
        # value is now 54
 
        xchgw   %ax, value
        # Value is now 0
        # %eax is now 54
 
        xchgb   %al, %bl
        # %ebx is now 54
        # %eax is now 2
 
        xchgw   value(%eax), %ax
        # value is now 0x00020000 = 131072
        # %eax is now 0
 
 # Linux sys_exit 
        mov     $1, %eax
        xorl    %ebx, %ebx
        int     $0x80

Application

If one of the operands is a memory address, then the operation has an implicit lock prefix, that is, the exchange operation is atomic. This can have a large performance penalty.

However, on some platforms exchanging two (non-partial) registers will trigger the register renamer. The register renamer is a unit in that merely renames registers, so no data actually have to be moved. This is super fast (branded as “zero-latency”). Renaming registers could be useful since

• some instructions either require certain operands to be located in specific register, but data will be needed later on,
• or encoding some opcodes is shorter if one of the operands is the accumulator register.

The xchg instruction is used for changing the Byte order (LE ↔ BE) of 16-bit values, because the bswap instruction is only available for 32-, and 64-bit values. You do so by addressing partial registers, e. g. xchg ah, al.

It is also worth noting that the common nop (no operation) instruction, 0x90, is the opcode for xchgl %eax, %eax.

Data swap based on comparison

cmpxchg arg2, arg1	GAS Syntax
cmpxchg arg1, arg2	Intel Syntax

cmpxchg stands for compare and exchange. Exchange is misleading as no data are actually exchanged.

The cmpxchg instruction has one implicit operand: the al/ax/eax depending on the size of arg1.

1. The instruction compares arg1 to al/ax/eax.
2. If they are equal, arg1 becomes arg2. (arg1 = arg2)
3. Otherwise, al/ax/eax becomes arg1.

Unlike xchg there is no implicit lock prefix, and if the instruction is required to be atomic, lock has to be prefixed.

Operands

arg2 has to be a register. arg1 may be either a register or memory operand.

Modified flags

• ZF ≔ arg1 = (al|ax|eax) [depending on arg1’s size]
• CF, PF, AF, SF, OF are altered, too.

Application

The following example shows how to use the cmpxchg instruction to create a spin lock which will be used to protect the result variable. The last thread to grab the spin lock will get to set the final value of result:

example for a spin lock

global main extern printf extern pthread_create extern pthread_exit extern pthread_join section .data align 4 sLock: dd 0 ; The lock, values are: ; 0 unlocked ; 1 locked tID1: dd 0 tID2: dd 0 fmtStr1: db "In thread %d with ID: %02x", 0x0A, 0 fmtStr2: db "Result %d", 0x0A, 0 section .bss align 4 result: resd 1 section .text main: ; Using main since we are using gcc to link ; ; Call pthread_create(pthread_t *thread, const pthread_attr_t *attr, ; void *(*start_routine) (void *), void *arg); ; push dword 0 ; Arg Four: argument pointer push thread1 ; Arg Three: Address of routine push dword 0 ; Arg Two: Attributes push tID1 ; Arg One: pointer to the thread ID call pthread_create push dword 0 ; Arg Four: argument pointer push thread2 ; Arg Three: Address of routine push dword 0 ; Arg Two: Attributes push tID2 ; Arg One: pointer to the thread ID call pthread_create ; ; Call int pthread_join(pthread_t thread, void **retval) ; ; push dword 0 ; Arg Two: retval push dword [tID1] ; Arg One: Thread ID to wait on call pthread_join push dword 0 ; Arg Two: retval push dword [tID2] ; Arg One: Thread ID to wait on call pthread_join push dword [result] push dword fmtStr2 call printf add esp, 8 ; Pop stack 2 times 4 bytes call exit thread1: pause push dword [tID1] push dword 1 push dword fmtStr1 call printf add esp, 12 ; Pop stack 3 times 4 bytes call spinLock mov [result], dword 1 call spinUnlock push dword 0 ; Arg one: retval call pthread_exit thread2: pause push dword [tID2] push dword 2 push dword fmtStr1 call printf add esp, 12 ; Pop stack 3 times 4 bytes call spinLock mov [result], dword 2 call spinUnlock push dword 0 ; Arg one: retval call pthread_exit spinLock: push ebp mov ebp, esp mov edx, 1 ; Value to set sLock to spin: mov eax, [sLock] ; Check sLock test eax, eax ; If it was zero, maybe we have the lock jnz spin ; If not try again ; ; Attempt atomic compare and exchange: ; if (sLock == eax): ; sLock <- edx ; zero flag <- 1 ; else: ; eax <- edx ; zero flag <- 0 ; ; If sLock is still zero then it will have the same value as eax and ; sLock will be set to edx which is one and therefore we aquire the ; lock. If the lock was acquired between the first test and the ; cmpxchg then eax will not be zero and we will spin again. ; lock cmpxchg [sLock], edx test eax, eax jnz spin pop ebp ret spinUnlock: push ebp mov ebp, esp mov eax, 0 xchg eax, [sLock] pop ebp ret exit: ; ; Call exit(3) syscall ; void exit(int status) ; mov ebx, 0 ; Arg one: the status mov eax, 1 ; Syscall number: int 0x80 In order to assemble, link and run the program we need to do the following: $ nasm -felf32 -g cmpxchgSpinLock.asm $ gcc -o cmpxchgSpinLock cmpxchgSpinLock.o -lpthread $ ./cmpxchgSpinLock

Move with zero extend

movz src, dest	GAS Syntax
movzx dest, src	Intel Syntax

movz stands for move with zero extension. Like the regular mov the movz instruction copies data from the src operand to the dest operand, but the remaining bits in dest that are not provided by src are filled with zeros. This instruction is useful for copying a small, unsigned value to a bigger register.

Operands

Dest has to be a register, and src can be either another register or a memory operand. For this operation to make sense dest has to be larger than src.

Modified flags

There are none.

Example

 .data
 
 byteval:
        .byte   204
 
 .text
        .global _start
 
 _start:
        movzbw  byteval, %ax
        # %eax is now 204
 
        movzwl  %ax, %ebx
        # %ebx is now 204
 
        movzbl  byteval, %esi
        # %esi is now 204
 
 # Linux sys_exit 
        mov     $1, %eax
        xorl    %ebx, %ebx
        int     $0x80

Move with sign extend

movs src, dest	GAS Syntax
movsx dest, src	Intel Syntax

movsx stands for move with sign extension. The movsx instruction copies the src operand in the dest operand and pads the remaining bits not provided by src with the sign bit (the MSB) of src.

This instruction is useful for copying a signed small value to a bigger register.

Operands

movsx accepts the same operands as movzx.

Modified Flags

movsx does not modify any flags, either.

Example

 .data
 
 byteval:
        .byte   -24 # = 0xe8
 
 .text
        .global _start
 
 _start:
        movsbw  byteval, %ax
        # %ax is now -24 = 0xffe8
 
        movswl  %ax, %ebx
        # %ebx is now -24 = 0xffffffe8
 
        movsbl  byteval, %esi
        # %esi is now -24 = 0xffffffe8
 
 # Linux sys_exit 
        mov     $1, %eax
        xorl    %ebx, %ebx
        int     $0x80

Move String

movsb

Move byte.

The movsb instruction copies one byte from the memory location specified in esi to the location specified in edi. If the direction flag is cleared, then esi and edi are incremented after the operation. Otherwise, if the direction flag is set, then the pointers are decremented. In that case the copy would happen in the reverse direction, starting at the highest address and moving toward lower addresses until ecx is zero.

Operands

There are no explicit operands, but

• ecx determines the number of iterations,
• esi specifies the source address,
• edi the destination address, and
• DF is used to determine the direction (it can be altered by the cld and std instruction).

Modified flags

No flags are modified by this instruction.

Example

section .text
  ; copy mystr into mystr2
  mov esi, mystr    ; loads address of mystr into esi
  mov edi, mystr2   ; loads address of mystr2 into edi
  cld               ; clear direction flag (forward)
  mov ecx,6
  rep movsb         ; copy six times
 
section .bss
  mystr2: resb 6
 
section .data
  mystr db "Hello", 0x0

movsw

Move word

The movsw instruction copies one word (two bytes) from the location specified in esi to the location specified in edi. It basically does the same thing as movsb, except with words instead of bytes.

Operands

None.

Modified flags

• No FLAGS are modified by this instruction

Example

section .code
  ; copy mystr into mystr2
  mov esi, mystr
  mov edi, mystr2
  cld
  mov ecx,4
  rep movsw
  ; mystr2 is now AaBbCca\0
 
section .bss
  mystr2: resb 8
 
section .data
  mystr db "AaBbCca", 0x0

Load Effective Address

lea src, dest	GAS Syntax
lea dest, src	Intel Syntax

lea stands for load effective address. The lea instruction calculates the address of the src operand and loads it into the dest operand.

Operands

src

• Immediate
• Register
• Memory

dest

• Register

Modified flags

• No FLAGS are modified by this instruction

Note

Load Effective Address calculates its src operand in the same way as the mov instruction does, but rather than loading the contents of that address into the dest operand, it loads the address itself.

lea can be used not only for calculating addresses, but also general-purpose unsigned integer arithmetic (with the caveat and possible advantage that FLAGS are unmodified). This can be quite powerful, since the src operand can take up to 4 parameters: base register, index register, scalar multiplier and displacement, e.g. [eax + edx*4 -4] (Intel syntax) or -4(%eax, %edx, 4) (GAS syntax). The scalar multiplier is limited to constant values 1, 2, 4, or 8 for byte, word, double word or quad word offsets respectively. This by itself allows for multiplication of a general register by constant values 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 9, as shown below (using NASM syntax):

lea ebx, [ebx*2]      ; Multiply ebx by 2
lea ebx, [ebx*8+ebx]  ; Multiply ebx by 9, which totals ebx*18

Conditional Move

cmovcc src, dest	GAS Syntax
cmovcc dest, src	Intel Syntax

cmov stands for conditional move. It behaves like mov but the execution depends on various flags. There are following instruction available:

available cmovcc combinations

	… = 1	… = 0
ZF	cmovz, cmove	cmovnz, cmovne
OF	cmovo	cmovno
SF	cmovs	cmovns
CF	cmovc, cmovb, cmovnae	cmovnc, cmovnb, cmovae
CF ∨ ZF	cmovbe	N/A
PF	cmovp, cmovpe	cmovnp, cmovpo
SF = OF	cmovge, cmovnl	cmovnge, cmovl
ZF ∨ SF ≠ OF	cmovng, cmovle	N/A
CF ∨ ZF	cmova	N/A
	¬CF	SF = OF
¬ZF	cmovnbe, cmova	cmovg, cmovnle

The cmov instruction needs to be available on the platform. This can be checked by using the cpuid instruction.

Operands

Dest has to be a register. Src can be either a register or memory operand.

Application

The cmov instruction can be used to eliminate branches, thus usage of cmov instruction avoids branch mispredictions. However, the cmov instructions needs to be used wisely: the dependency chain will become longer.

Data transfer instructions of 8086 microprocessor

General

General purpose byte or word transfer instructions:

mov

copy byte or word from specified source to specified destination

push

copy specified word to top of stack.

pop

copy word from top of stack to specified location

pusha

copy all registers to stack

popa

copy words from stack to all registers

xchg

Exchange bytes or exchange words

xlat

translate a byte in al using a table in memory

Input/Output

These are I/O port transfer instructions:

in

copy a byte or word from specific port to accumulator

out

copy a byte or word from accumulator to specific port

Address Transfer Instruction

Special address transfer Instructions:

lea

load effective address of operand into specified register

lds

load DS register and other specified register from memory

les

load ES register and other specified register from memory

Flags

Flag transfer instructions:

lahf

load ah with the low byte of flag register

sahf

stores ah register to low byte of flag register

pushf

copy flag register to top of stack

popf

copy top of stack word to flag register

Control Flow

Almost all programming languages have the ability to change the order in which statements are evaluated, and assembly is no exception. The instruction pointer (EIP) register contains the address of the next instruction to be executed. To change the flow of control, the programmer must be able to modify the value of EIP. This is where control flow functions come in.

mov eip, label   ; wrong
jmp label        ; right

Comparison Instructions

test reference, accumulator	GAS Syntax
test accumulator, reference	Intel Syntax

Performs a bit-wise logical and on accumulator and reference the result of which we will refer to as commonBits and sets the ZF(zero), SF(sign) and PF (parity) flags based on commonBits. CommonBits is then discarded.

Operands

reference

• Register
• Immediate

accumulator

• Register (where AL/AX/EAX can be encoded specially if reference is an immediate value)
• Memory

Modified flags

• SF ≔ MostSignificantBit(commonBits)
• ZF ≔ (commonBits = 0), so a set ZF means, accumulator and reference do not have any set bits in common
• PF ≔ BitWiseXorNor(commonBits[Max-1:0]), so PF is set if and only if commonBits[Max-1:0] has an even number of 1 bits
• CF ≔ 0
• OF ≔ 0
• AF is undefined

Application

• passing the same register twice: test rax, rax
  • SF becomes the sign of rax, which is a simple test for non-negativity
  • ZF is set if rax is zero
  • PF is set if rax has an even number of set bits

cmp subtrahend, minuend	GAS Syntax
cmp minuend, subtrahend	Intel Syntax

Performs a comparison operation between minuend and subtrahend. The comparison is performed by a (signed) subtraction of subtrahend from minuend, the results of which can be called difference. Difference is then discarded. If subtrahend is an immediate value it will be sign extended to the length of minuend. The EFLAGS register is set in the same manner as a sub instruction.

Note that the GAS/AT&T syntax can be rather confusing, as for example cmp $0, %rax followed by jl branch will branch if %rax < 0 (and not the opposite as might be expected from the order of the operands).

Operands

minuend

• AL/AX/EAX (only if subtrahend is immediate)
• Register
• Memory

subtrahend

• Register
• Immediate
• Memory

Modified flags

• SF ≔ MostSignificantBit(difference), so an unset SF means the difference is non-negative (minuend ≥ subtrahend [NB: signed comparison])
• ZF ≔ (difference = 0)
• PF ≔ BitWiseXorNor(difference[Max-1:0])
• CF, OF and AF

Jump Instructions

The jump instructions allow the programmer to (indirectly) set the value of the EIP register. The location passed as the argument is usually a label. The first instruction executed after the jump is the instruction immediately following the label. All of the jump instructions, with the exception of jmp, are conditional jumps, meaning that program flow is diverted only if a condition is true. These instructions are often used after a comparison instruction (see above), but since many other instructions set flags, this order is not required.

See chapter “X86 architecture”, § “EFLAGS register” for more information about the flags and their meaning.

Unconditional Jumps

jmp loc

Loads EIP with the specified address (i.e. the next instruction executed will be the one specified by jmp).

Jump if Equal

je loc

ZF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if operands of previous cmp instruction are equal. je is identical to jz. For example:

mov ecx, $5
mov edx, $5
cmp ecx, edx
je equal
; if it did not jump to the label equal,
; then this means ecx and edx are not equal.
equal:
; if it jumped here, then this means ecx and edx are equal

Jump if Not Equal

jne loc

ZF = 0

Loads EIP with the specified address, if operands of previous cmp instruction are not equal. jne is identical to jnz

Jump if Greater

jg loc

SF = OF and ZF = 0

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the minuend of the previous cmp instruction is greater than the second (performs signed comparison).

Jump if Greater or Equal

jge loc

SF = OF or ZF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the minuend of the of previous cmp instruction is greater than or equal to the subtrahend (performs signed comparison).

Jump if Above (unsigned comparison)

ja loc

CF = 0 and ZF = 0

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the minuend of the previous cmp instruction is greater than the subtrahend. ja is the same as jg, except that it performs an unsigned comparison.

That means, the following piece of code always jumps (unless rbx is -1, too), because negative one is represented as all bits set in the two's complement.

mov rax, -1 // rax := -1
cmp rax, rbx
ja loc

Interpreting all bits set (without treating any bit as the sign) has the value 2ⁿ-1 (where n is the length of the register). That is the largest unsigned value a register can hold.

Jump if Above or Equal (unsigned comparison)

jae loc

CF = 0 or ZF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the minuend of previous cmp instruction is greater than or equal to the subtrahend. jae is the same as jge, except that it performs an unsigned comparison.

Jump if Lesser

jl loc

The criterion required for a jl is that SF ≠ OF. It loads EIP with the specified address, if the criterion is met. So either SF or OF can be set, but not both in order to satisfy this criterion. If we take the sub (which is basically what a cmp does) instruction as an example, we have:

minuend - subtrahend

With respect to sub and cmp there are several cases that fulfill this criterion:

1. minuend < subtrahend and the operation does not have overflow
2. minuend > subtrahend and the operation has an overflow

In the first case SF will be set but not OF and in second case OF will be set but not SF since the overflow will reset the most significant bit to zero and thus preventing SF being set. The SF ≠ OF criterion avoids the cases where:

1. minuend > subtrahend and the operation does not have overflow
2. minuend < subtrahend and the operation has an overflow
3. minuend = subtrahend

In the first case neither SF nor OF are set, in the second case OF will be set and SF will be set since the overflow will reset the most significant bit to one and in the last case neither SF nor OF will be set.

Jump if Less or Equal

jle loc

SF ≠ OF or ZF = 1.

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the minuend of previous cmp instruction is lesser than or equal to the subtrahend. See the jl section for a more detailed description of the criteria.

Jump if Below (unsigned comparison)

jb loc

CF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if first operand of previous CMP instruction is lesser than the second. jb is the same as jl, except that it performs an unsigned comparison.

mov rax, 0   ; rax ≔ 0
cmp rax, rbx ; rax ≟ rbx
jb loc       ; always jumps, unless rbx is also 0

Jump if Below or Equal (unsigned comparison)

jbe loc

CF = 1 or ZF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if minuend of previous cmp instruction is lesser than or equal to the subtrahend. jbe is the same as jle, except that it performs an unsigned comparison.

Jump if Zero

jz loc

ZF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the zero bit is set from a previous arithmetic expression. jz is identical to je.

Jump if Not Zero

jnz loc

ZF = 0

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the zero bit is not set from a previous arithmetic expression. jnz is identical to jne.

Jump if Signed

js loc

SF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the sign bit is set from a previous arithmetic expression.

Jump if Not Signed

jns loc

SF = 0

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the sign bit is not set from a previous arithmetic expression.

Jump if Carry

jc loc

CF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the carry bit is set from a previous arithmetic expression.

Jump if Not Carry

jnc loc

CF = 0

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the carry bit is not set from a previous arithmetic expression.

Jump if Overflow

jo loc

OF = 1

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the overflow bit is set on a previous arithmetic expression.

Jump if Not Overflow

jno loc

OF = 0

Loads EIP with the specified address, if the overflow bit is not set on a previous arithmetic expression.

Jump if counter register is zero

jcxz loc

CX = 0

jecxz loc

ECX = 0

jrcxz loc

RCX = 0

Loads EIP with the specified address if the counter register is zero.

Application

• The existence of this instruction makes the counter register particularly suitable for holding (high-level language) pointers: In most programming languages the “null pointer”, an invalid pointer, is implemented by the numeric value 0. Usually, you do not want to dereference such a null pointer as the result will be bogus or even cause a GPF. By jumping away, with jecx, to some code handling this error, you can avoid running into such a situation before you attempt to dereference the pointer value. You do not need an extra test ecx, ecx.
• If you are using the loop instruction to implement a loop, but it is possible the requested number of iteration is zero, you may want to insert a jecx before the loop’s body. Otherwise, loop will decrement zero, thus ending up doing 2³² iterations.

Function Calls

call proc

Pushes the address of the instruction that follows the call call, i.e. usually the next line in your source code, onto the top of the stack, and then jumps to the specified location. This is used mostly for subroutines.

ret [val]

Pops the next value on the stack into EIP, and then pops the specified number of bytes off the stack. If val is not supplied, the instruction will not pop any values off the stack after returning.

Loop Instructions

loop arg

The loop instruction decrements ECX and jumps to the address specified by arg unless decrementing ECX caused its value to become zero. For example:

	mov ecx, 5 ; ecx ≔ 5
head:
	; the code here would be executed 5 times
	loop head

loop does not set any flags.

loopcc arg

These loop instructions decrement ECX and jump to the address specified by arg if their condition is satisfied (that is, a specific flag is set), unless decrementing ECX caused its value to become zero.

• loope loop if equal
• loopne loop if not equal
• loopnz loop if not zero
• loopz loop if zero

That way, only testing for a non-zero ECX can be combined with testing ZF. Other flags can not be tested for, say there is no loopnc “loop while ECX ≠ 0 and CF unset”.

Enter and Leave

enter arg

enter creates a stack frame with the specified amount of space allocated on the stack.

leave

leave destroys the current stack frame, and restores the previous frame. Using Intel syntax this is equivalent to:

mov esp, ebp ; esp ≔ ebp
pop ebp

This will set EBP and ESP to their respective value before the function prologue began therefore reversing any modification to the stack that took place during the prologue.

Other Control Instructions

hlt

Halts the processor. Execution will be resumed after processing next hardware interrupt, unless IF is cleared.

nop

No operation. This instruction doesn't do anything, but wastes (an) instruction cycle(s) in the processor.

This instruction is often represented as an xchg operation with the operands EAX and EAX (an operation without side-effects), because there is no designated opcode for doing nothing. This just as a passing remark, so that you do not get confused with disassembled code.

lock

Asserts #LOCK prefix on next instruction.

wait

Waits for the FPU to finish its last calculation.

Arithmetic

All arithmetic instructions are executed in (one of) the ALUs. The ALU can only perform integer arithmetics, for floating point instructions see chapter “Floating Point”.

Basic operations

Arithmetic instructions take two operands: a destination and a source.

• The destination must be a register or a memory location.
• The source may be either a memory location, a register, or a constant value.

Note that at most one operand may be a memory location.

Addition and Subtraction

add addend, destination	GAS Syntax
add destination, addend	Intel Syntax

This adds addend to destination and stores the result in destination.

sub subtrahend, destination	GAS Syntax
sub destination, subtrahend	Intel Syntax

Like add, only it subtracts subtrahend from destination instead. In C: destination -= subtrahend;

Multiplication

Unsigned Multiplication

mul multiplicand

This multiplies multiplicand by the value of corresponding byte-length in the accumulator.

result registers used by mul

width of multiplicand	1 byte	2 bytes	4 bytes	8 bytes
corresponding multiplier	AL	AX	EAX	RAX
product higher part stored in	AH	DX	EDX	RDX
product lower part stored in	AL	AX	EAX	RAX

In the second case, the target is not EAX for backward compatibility with code written for older processors.

Affected flags are:

• OF ≔ higher part of product ≠ 0
• CF ≔ higher part of product ≠ 0

All other flags are undefined.

Signed Multiplication

imul multiplicand

This instruction is almost like mul, but it treats the sign bit (the MSB), differently.

The imul instruction also accepts two other formats:

imul multiplicand, destination	GAS Syntax
imul destination, multiplicand	Intel Syntax

This multiplies destination by multiplicand and puts the result, the product, in destination.

imul multiplicand, multiplier, product	GAS Syntax
imul product, multiplier, multiplicand	Intel Syntax

This multiplies multiplier by multiplicand and places it into product.

Division

div divisor

This divides the value in the dividend register(s) by divisor, see table below.

idiv arg

As div, only signed.

result registers for div

width of divisor	1 byte	2 bytes	4 bytes	8 bytes
dividend	AX	DX ￮ AX	EDX ￮ EAX	RDX ￮ RAX
remainder stored in	AH	DX	EDX	RDX
quotient stored in	AL	AX	EAX	RAX

The circle (￮) means concatenation. With divisor size 4, this means that EDX are the bits 32-63 and EAX are bits 0-31 of the input number (with lower bit numbers being less significant, in this example).

As you typically have 32 or 64-bit input values for signed division, you often need to use CDQ or CQO to sign-extend EAX into EDX or RAXinto RDX just before the division.

If quotient does not fit into quotient register, arithmetic overflow interrupt occurs. All flags are in undefined state after the operation.

Sign Inversion

neg arg

Arithmetically negates the argument (i.e. two's complement negation).

Carry Arithmetic Instructions

adc src, dest	GAS Syntax
adc dest, src	Intel Syntax

Add with carry. Adds src + CF to dest, storing result in dest. Usually follows a normal add instruction to deal with values twice as large as the size of the register. In the following example, source contains a 64-bit number which will be added to destination.

mov eax, [source] ; read low 32 bits
mov edx, [source+4] ; read high 32 bits
add [destination], eax ; add low 32 bits
adc [destination+4], edx ; add high 32 bits, plus carry

sbb src, dest	GAS Syntax
sbb dest, src	Intel Syntax

Subtract with borrow. Subtracts src + CF from dest, storing result in dest. Usually follows a normal sub instruction to deal with values twice as large as the size of the register.

Increment and Decrement

Increment

inc augend

This instruction increments the register value augend by 1. It performs much faster than add arg, 1, but it does not affect the CF.

Decrement

dec minuend

Operation

Decrements the value in minuend by 1, but this is much faster than the semantically equivalent sub minuend, 1.

Operands

Minuend may be either a register or memory operand.

Application

• Some programming language represent Boolean values with either all bits zero, or all bits set to one. When you are programming Boolean functions you need to take account of this. The dec instruction can help you with this. Very often you set the final (Boolean) result based on flags. By choosing an instruction that is opposite of the intended and then decrementing the resulting value you will obtain a value satisfying the programming language’s requirements. Here is a trivial example testing for zero.

  xor rax, rax   ; rax ≔ false (ensure result is not wrong due to any residue)
  test rdi, rdi  ; rdi ≟ 0 (ZF ≔ rax = 0)
  setnz al       ;  al ≔ ¬ZF
  dec rax        ; rax ≔ rax − 1
  

  If you intend to set false the “erroneously” set 1 will be “fixed” by dec. If you intend to set true, which is represented by −1, you will decrement the value zero, the “underflow” of which causing all bits to flip. Note, some architectures execute dec slowly, because of the fact that the flags register is overwritten only partially. It therefore is usually more efficient to use neg

  setz al        ;  al ≔ ZF
  neg rax        ; rax ≔ 0 − rax
  

  which will affect the CF too, though.
• Since inc and dec do not affect the CF, you can use these instructions to update a loop’s counting variable without overwriting some information stored in it. If you need an instruction that does not affect any flags while implicitly also performing a dec, you could use the rather slow loop.

Pointer arithmetic

The lea instruction can be used for arithmetic, especially on pointers. See chapter “data transfer”, § “load effective address”.

Logic

Logical instructions

The instructions on this page deal with bit-wise logical instructions. For more information about bit-wise logic, see Digital Circuits/Logic Operations.

All logical instructions presented in this section are executed in the, as the name already suggests, the arithmetic logic unit.

binary operations

These instructions require two operands.

logical and

and mask, destination	GAS Syntax
and destination, mask	Intel Syntax

operation

and performs a bit-wise and of the two operands, and stores the result in destination.

side effects

See below.

example

movl $0x1, %edx ; edx ≔ 1
movl $0x0, %ecx ; ecx ≔ 0
andl %edx, %ecx ; ecx ≔ edx ∧ ecx
; here ecx would be 0 because 1 ∧ 0 ⇔ 0

application

• An and can be used to calculate the intersection of two “sets”, or a value representing a “mask”. Some programming language require that Boolean values are stored exactly as either 1 or 0. An and rax, 1 will ensure only the LSB is set, or not set.
• If partial register addressing is not available in the desired size, an and can be used for a ${\text{destination}}\!\!\!\!\mod {\text{mask}}$ operation, that is the remainder of integer division. For that, mask has to contain the value $2^{n}-1$ (i. e. all lower bits set until a certain threshold), where $2^{n}$ equals your desired divisor.

logical or

or addend, destination	GAS Syntax
or destination, addend	Intel Syntax

operation

The or instruction performs a bit-wise or of the two operands, and stores the result in destination.

side effects

See below.

example

movl $0x1, %edx ; edx ≔ 1
movl $0x0, %ecx ; ecx ≔ 0
orl  %edx, %ecx ; ecx ≔ edx ∨ ecx
; here ecx would be 1 because 1 ∨ 0 ⇔ 1

application

• An or can be used to calculate the union of two “sets”, or a value representing a “mask”.

logical xor

xor flip, destination	GAS Syntax
xor destination, flip	Intel Syntax

operation

Performs a bit-wise xor of the two operands, and stores the result in destination.

side effects

See below.

example

movl $0x1, %edx ; edx ≔ 1
movl $0x0, %ecx ; ecx ≔ 0
xorl %edx, %ecx ; ecx ≔ edx ⊕ ecx
; here ecx would be 1 because 1 ⊕ 0 ⇔ 1

application

• xor rax, rax (or any GPR twice) will clear all bits. It is a specially recognized word. However, since xor affects flags it might introduce bogus dependencies.

common remarks

side effects for and, or, and xor

• OF ≔ 0
• CF ≔ 0
• SF becomes the value of the most significant bit of the calculated result
• ZF ≔ result = 0
• PF is set according to the result

unary operations

logical not

not argument

operation

Performs a bit-wise inversion of argument.

side-effects

None.

example

movl $0x1, %edx ; edx ≔ 1
notl %edx ; edx ≔ ¬edx
; here edx would be 0xFFFFFFFE because a bitwise NOT 0x00000001 = 0xFFFFFFFE

application

• not is frequently used to get a register with all bits set.

Shift and Rotate

Logical Shift Instructions

In a logical shift instruction (also referred to as unsigned shift), the bits that slide off the end disappear (except for the last, which goes into the carry flag), and the spaces are always filled with zeros. Logical shifts are best used with unsigned numbers.

shr cnt, dest	GAS Syntax
shr dest, cnt	Intel Syntax

Logical shift dest to the right by cnt bits.

shl cnt, dest	GAS Syntax
shl dest, cnt	Intel Syntax

Logical shift dest to the left by cnt bits.

Examples (GAS Syntax):

movw   $ff00,%ax        # ax=1111.1111.0000.0000 (0xff00, unsigned 65280, signed -256) 
shrw   $3,%ax           # ax=0001.1111.1110.0000 (0x1fe0, signed and unsigned 8160)
                        # (logical shifting unsigned numbers right by 3
                        #   is like integer division by 8)
shlw   $1,%ax           # ax=0011.1111.1100.0000 (0x3fc0, signed and unsigned 16320) 
                        # (logical shifting unsigned numbers left by 1
                        #   is like multiplication by 2)

Arithmetic Shift Instructions

In an arithmetic shift (also referred to as signed shift), like a logical shift, the bits that slide off the end disappear (except for the last, which goes into the carry flag). But in an arithmetic shift, the spaces are filled in such a way to preserve the sign of the number being slid. For this reason, arithmetic shifts are better suited for signed numbers in two's complement format.

sar cnt, dest	GAS Syntax
sar dest, cnt	Intel Syntax

Arithmetic shift dest to the right by cnt bits. Spaces are filled with sign bit (to maintain sign of original value), which is the original highest bit.

sal cnt, dest	GAS Syntax
sal dest, cnt	Intel Syntax

Arithmetic shift dest to the left by cnt bits. The bottom bits do not affect the sign, so the bottom bits are filled with zeros. This instruction is synonymous with SHL.

Examples (GAS Syntax):

movw   $ff00,%ax        # ax=1111.1111.0000.0000 (0xff00, unsigned 65280, signed -256)
salw   $2,%ax           # ax=1111.1100.0000.0000 (0xfc00, unsigned 64512, signed -1024)
                        # (arithmetic shifting left by 2 is like multiplication by 4 for
                        #   negative numbers, but has an impact on positives with most
                        #   significant bit set (i.e. set bits shifted out))
sarw   $5,%ax           # ax=1111.1111.1110.0000 (0xffe0, unsigned 65504, signed -32)
                        # (arithmetic shifting right by 5 is like integer division by 32
                        #   for negative numbers)

Extended Shift Instructions

The names of the double precision shift operations are somewhat misleading, hence they are listed as extended shift instructions on this page.

They are available for use with 16- and 32-bit data entities (registers/memory locations). The src operand is always a register, the dest operand can be a register or memory location, the cnt operand is an immediate byte value or the CL register. In 64-bit mode it is possible to address 64-bit data as well.

shld cnt, src, dest	GAS Syntax
shld dest, src, cnt	Intel Syntax

The operation performed by shld is to shift the most significant cnt bits out of dest, but instead of filling up the least significant bits with zeros, they are filled with the most significant cnt bits of src.

shrd cnt, src, dest	GAS Syntax
shrd dest, src, cnt	Intel Syntax

Likewise, the shrd operation shifts the least significant cnt bits out of dest, and fills up the most significant cnt bits with the least significant bits of the src operand.

Intel's nomenclature is misleading, in that the shift does not operate on double the basic operand size (i.e. specifying 32-bit operands doesn't make it a 64-bit shift): the src operand always remains unchanged.

Also, Intel's manual states that the results are undefined when cnt is greater than the operand size, but at least for 32- and 64-bit data sizes it has been observed that shift operations are performed by (cnt mod n), with n being the data size.

Examples (GAS Syntax):

xorw   %ax,%ax          # ax=0000.0000.0000.0000 (0x0000)
notw   %ax              # ax=1111.1111.1111.1111 (0xffff)
movw   $0x5500,%bx      # bx=0101.0101.0000.0000
shrdw  $4,%ax,%bx       # bx=1111.0101.0101.0000 (0xf550), ax is still 0xffff
shldw  $8,%bx,%ax       # ax=1111.1111.1111.0101 (0xfff5), bx is still 0xf550

Other examples (decimal numbers are used instead of binary number to explain the concept)

# ax = 1234 5678
# bx = 8765 4321
shrd   $3, %ax, %bx     # ax = 1234 5678 bx = 6788 7654

# ax = 1234 5678
# bx = 8765 4321
shld   $3, %ax, %bx     # bx = 5432 1123 ax = 1234 5678

Rotate Instructions

Rotate Right

In a rotate instruction, the bits that slide off the end of the register are fed back into the spaces.

ror offset, variable	GAS Syntax
ror variable, offset	Intel Syntax

Rotate variable to the right by offset bits. Here is a graphical representation how this looks like:

            ╭─────────────────╮
%al old     │ 0 0 1 0'0 1 1 1 │
ror 1, %al  ╰─╮╲ ╲ ╲ ╲ ╲ ╲ ╲╰─╯
%al new       1 0 0 1'0 0 1 1

The number of bits to rotate offset is masked to the lower 5 bits (or 6 bits in 64-bit mode). This is equivalent to a ${\text{offset}}\!\!\!\!\mod 32$ operation, i. e. the remainder of integer division (note: $2^{5}=32$). This means, you can never do one or more “complete” rotations.

Operands

• Variable has to be a register or memory location.
• Offset can be either
  • an immediate value (where the value 1 has a dedicated opcode),
  • or the cl register (that is the lowest byte of ecx).

Modified Flags

ror only alters flags if the masked offset is non-zero. The CF becomes the most recently rotated bit, so in the case of ror the result’s MSB (the “sign”).

Furthermore, if the masked offset = 1, OF ≔ result[MSB] ⊻ result[MSB−1], so the OF tells us, whether “the sign” has changed.

Rotate Left

rol offset, variable	GAS Syntax
rol variable, offset	Intel Syntax

Rotate variable to the left by offset bits.

Operands and modified flags are pretty much the same as for ror. However, in the case that the masked offset = 1, the OF is defined differently, although it has effectively same meaning. For rol 1, x the OF ≔ result[MSB] ⊻ result[LSB].

Note that the CF contains the LSB in the case of rol.

Rotate With Carry Instructions

Like with shifts, the rotate can use the carry bit as the "extra" bit that it shifts through.

rcr cnt, dest	GAS Syntax
rcr dest, cnt	Intel Syntax

Rotate dest to the right by cnt bits with carry.

rcl cnt, dest	GAS Syntax
rcl dest, cnt	Intel Syntax

Rotate dest to the left by cnt bits with carry.

Number of arguments

Unless stated, these instructions can take either one or two arguments. If only one is supplied, it is assumed to be a register or memory location and the number of bits to shift/rotate is one (this may be dependent on the assembler in use, however). shrl $1, %eax is equivalent to shrl %eax (GAS syntax).

Other Instructions

Stack Instructions

There are dedicated instructions for interacting with the stack.

Generic

push arg

This instruction decrements the stack pointer and stores the data specified as the argument into the location pointed to by the stack pointer.

pop arg

This instruction loads the data stored in the location pointed to by the stack pointer into the argument specified and then increments the stack pointer. For example:

mov eax, 5 mov ebx, 6
push eax	The stack is now: [5]
push ebx	The stack is now: [6] [5]
pop eax	The topmost item (which is 6) is now stored in eax. The stack is now: [5]
pop ebx	ebx is now equal to 5. The stack is now empty.

GPRs

pusha

This instruction pushes all the general purpose registers onto the stack in the following order: AX, CX, DX, BX, SP, BP, SI, DI. The value of SP pushed is the value before the instruction is executed. It is useful for saving state before an operation that could potentially change these registers.

popa

This instruction pops all the general purpose registers off the stack in the reverse order of PUSHA. That is, DI, SI, BP, SP, BX, DX, CX, AX. Used to restore state after a call to PUSHA.

pushad

This instruction works similarly to pusha, but pushes the 32-bit general purpose registers onto the stack instead of their 16-bit counterparts.

popad

This instruction works similarly to popa, but pops the 32-bit general purpose registers off of the stack instead of their 16-bit counterparts.

Flags

Because a good deal of all instructions somehow alter flags, the flags register is considered to be very volatile. As a consequence in microprocessor architecture design, it cannot be queried, nor altered directly (except for a few individual flags, such as the DF). Instead, a dedicated push and pop instruction (attempts to) retrieve or store a value to and from the stack. Using them is “slow”, because, as there is only one flags register, all pending (potential) writes or reads must be executed first, before the actual value can be obtained or overwritten. Furthermore, what can be read or overwritten depends on privileges.

pushf

This instruction decrements the stack pointer and then loads the location pointed to by the stack pointer with a masked copy of the flags register’s contents. The RF and VM flag are always cleared in the copy. Under certain conditions a GPF may arise.

popf

This instruction attempts, as far as possible, loading the flag register with the contents of the memory location pointed to by the stack pointer and then increments the contents of the stack pointer. Some flags may pertain their original values, even if requested to do so. If there is a lack of privileges to change certain or any values at all, a GPF occurs.

Outside OS development (like threading), a standard usage case of these instructions is to check, whether the cpuid instruction is available. If you can alter the ID flag in the EFLAGS register, the cpuid instruction is supported.

example for a function checking for cpuid

Here, we assume we have the proper privileges to retrieve and overwrite the flags register. In this example the programming language using this function requires Boolean values to be exactly 0 or 1: pushfq ; put RFLAGS on top of stack mov rax, [rsp] ; preserve copy for comparison xor [rsp], $200000 ; flip bit in copy popfq ; _attempt_ to overwrite RFLAGS pushfq ; obtain possibly altered RFLAGS pop rcx ; rcx ≔ rsp↑; inc(rsp, 8) xor rax, rcx ; cancel out any _unchanged_ bits shr eax, 20 ; move ID flag into bit position 0

Flags instructions

While the flags register is used to report on results of executed instructions (overflow, carry, etc.), it also contains flags that affect the operation of the processor. These flags are set and cleared with special instructions.

Interrupt Flag

The IF flag tells a processor if it should accept hardware interrupts. It should be kept set under normal execution. In fact, in protected mode, neither of these instructions can be executed by user-level programs.

sti

Sets the interrupt flag. If set, the processor can accept interrupts from peripheral hardware.

cli

Clears the interrupt flag. Hardware interrupts cannot interrupt execution. Programs can still generate interrupts, called software interrupts, and change the flow of execution. Non-maskable interrupts (NMI) cannot be blocked using this instruction.

Direction Flag

The DF flag tells the processor which way to read data when using string instructions. That is, whether to decrement or increment the esi and edi registers after a movs instruction.

std

Sets the direction flag. Registers will decrement, reading backwards.

cld

Clears the direction flag. Registers will increment, reading forwards.

Carry Flag

The CF flag is often modified after arithmetic instructions, but it can be set or cleared manually as well.

stc

Sets the carry flag.

clc

Clears the carry flag.

cmc

Complements (inverts) the carry flag.

Other

sahf

Stores the content of AH register into the lower byte of the flag register.

lahf

Loads the AH register with the contents of the lower byte of the flag register.

I/O Instructions

in src, dest	GAS Syntax
in dest, src	Intel Syntax

The IN instruction almost always has the operands AX and DX (or EAX and EDX) associated with it. DX (src) frequently holds the port address to read, and AX (dest) receives the data from the port. In Protected Mode operating systems, the IN instruction is frequently locked, and normal users can't use it in their programs.

out src, dest	GAS Syntax
out dest, src	Intel Syntax

The OUT instruction is very similar to the IN instruction. OUT outputs data from a given register (src) to a given output port (dest). In protected mode, the OUT instruction is frequently locked so normal users can't use it.

No-op Instructions

The x86 instruction set has a NOP (no operation) instruction mnemonic:

nop

It has a single byte opcode, 0x90. This instruction has no side effects other than incrementing the instruction pointer (EIP). Despite its name, a "do nothing" instruction is useful for execution speed optimizations. It is routinely used by optimizing compilers/assemblers, and can be seen scattered around in disassembled code, but is almost never used in manually written assembly code.

For illustration, some applications of nop instructions are:

• aligning the following instruction to the start of a memory block;
• aligning series of jump targets;
• filling in space when binary patching an executable, e.g. removing a branch, instead of keeping dead code (code that is never executed).

Multi-byte no-op instructions

x86 extensions (including x86-64) from AMD and Intel include multi-byte no-op instructions. Actually, any valid instruction that doesn't have side effects can serve as a no-op. Some of the versions recommended by both referenced manuals are listed below. Size (bytes) Opcode (hexadecimal) Encoding --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 90 NOP 2 66 90 66 NOP 3 0F 1F 00 NOP DWORD ptr [EAX] 4 0F 1F 40 00 NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + 00H] 5 0F 1F 44 00 00 NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + EAX*1 + 00H] 6 66 0F 1F 44 00 00 NOP DWORD ptr [AX + AX*1 + 00H] 7 0F 1F 80 00 00 00 00 NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + 00000000H] 8 0F 1F 84 00 00 00 00 00 NOP DWORD ptr [AX + AX*1 + 00000000H] Because this filler code is executable, it should take up as few execution resources as possible, should not diminish decode density, and should not modify any processor state other than to advance the instruction pointer (rIP).

System Instructions

These instructions were added with the Pentium II.

sysenter

This instruction causes the processor to enter protected system mode (supervisor mode or "kernel mode").

sysexit

This instruction causes the processor to leave protected system mode, and enter user mode.

Misc Instructions

Read time stamp counter

RDTSC

RDTSC was introduced in the Pentium processor, the instruction reads the number of clock cycles since reset and returns the value in EDX:EAX. This can be used as a way of obtaining a low overhead, high resolution CPU timing. Although with modern CPU microarchitecture(multi-core, hyperthreading) and multi-CPU machines you are not guaranteed synchronized cycle counters between cores and CPUs. Also the CPU frequency may be variable due to power saving or dynamic overclocking. So the instruction may be less reliable than when it was first introduced and should be used with care when being used for performance measurements.

It is possible to use just the lower 32-bits of the result but it should be noted that on a 600 MHz processor the register would overflow every 7.16 seconds:

$2^{32}{\text{ cycles}}*{\frac {1{\text{ second}}}{600,000,000{\text{ cycles}}}}\approx 7.16{\text{ seconds}}$

( 0 )

While using the full 64-bits allows for 974.9 years between overflows:

$2^{64}{\text{ cycles}}*{\frac {1{\text{ second}}}{600,000,000{\text{ cycles}}*86400{\text{ seconds in a day}}*\ 365{\text{ days in a year}}}}\approx 974.9{\text{ years}}$

( 1 )

The following program (using NASM syntax) is an example of using RDTSC to measure the number of cycles a small block takes to execute:

global main 

extern printf

section .data
	align 4
	a:	dd 10.0
	b:	dd 5.0
	c:	dd 2.0
	fmtStr:	db "edx:eax = %llu edx = %d eax = %d", 0x0A, 0

section .bss
	align 4
	cycleLow:	resd 1
	cycleHigh:	resd 1
	result:		resd 1

section .text
	main:			; Using main since we are using gcc to link

;
;	op	dst,  src
;
	xor	eax, eax
	cpuid
	rdtsc
	mov	[cycleLow], eax
	mov	[cycleHigh], edx 

				;
				; Do some work before measurements 
				;
	fld	dword [a]
	fld	dword [c]
	fmulp	st1
	fmulp	st1
	fld	dword [b]
	fld	dword [b]
	fmulp	st1
	faddp	st1
	fsqrt
	fstp	dword [result]
				;
				; Done work
				;

	cpuid
	rdtsc
				;
				; break points so we can examine the values
				; before we alter the data in edx:eax and
				; before we print out the results.
				;
break1:
	sub	eax, [cycleLow]
	sbb	edx, [cycleHigh]
break2:
	push	eax
	push	edx
	push 	edx
	push	eax
	push	dword fmtStr
	call	printf
	add	esp, 20		; Pop stack 5 times 4 bytes


				;
				; Call _exit(2) syscall
				;	noreturn void _exit(int status)
				;
	mov	ebx, 0		; Arg one: the 8-bit status
	mov	eax, 1		; Syscall number:
	int 	0x80

In order to assemble, link and run the program we need to do the following:

$ nasm -felf -g rdtsc.asm -l rdtsc.lst
$ gcc -m32 -o rdtsc rdtsc.o
$ ./rdtsc

X86 Interrupts

Interrupts are special routines that are defined on a per-system basis. This means that the interrupts on one system might be different from the interrupts on another system. Therefore, it is usually a bad idea to rely heavily on interrupts when you are writing code that needs to be portable.

What is an Interrupt?

In modern operating systems, the programmer often doesn't need to use interrupts. In Windows, for example, the programmer conducts business with the Win32 API. However, these API calls interface with the kernel, and the kernel will often trigger interrupts to perform different tasks. In older operating systems (specifically DOS), the programmer didn't have an API to use, and so they had to do all their work through interrupts.

Interrupt Instruction

int arg

This instruction issues the specified interrupt. For instance:

int 0x0A

Calls interrupt 10 (0x0A (hex) = 10 (decimal)).

Types of Interrupts

There are 3 types of interrupts: Hardware Interrupts, Software Interrupts and Exceptions.

Hardware Interrupts

Hardware interrupts are triggered by hardware devices. For instance, when you type on your keyboard, the keyboard triggers a hardware interrupt. The processor stops what it is doing, and executes the code that handles keyboard input (typically reading the key you pressed into a buffer in memory). Hardware interrupts are typically asynchronous - their occurrence is unrelated to the instructions being executed at the time they are raised.

Software Interrupts

There are also a series of software interrupts that are usually used to transfer control to a function in the operating system kernel. Software interrupts are triggered by the instruction int. For example, the instruction "int 14h" triggers interrupt 0x14. The processor then stops the current program, and jumps to the code to handle interrupt 14. When interrupt handling is complete, the processor returns flow to the original program.

Exceptions

Exceptions are caused by exceptional conditions in the code which is executing, for example an attempt to divide by zero or access a protected memory area. The processor will detect this problem, and transfer control to a handler to service the exception. This handler may re-execute the offending code after changing some value (for example, the zero dividend), or if this cannot be done, the program causing the exception may be terminated.

Further Reading

We discuss advanced details in a later chapter of this book, Advanced Interrupts.

A great list of interrupts for DOS and related systems is at Ralf Brown's Interrupt List.

• Operating System Design/Processes/Interrupt
• Embedded Systems/Interrupts
• Microprocessor Design/Interrupts

x86 Assemblers

There are a number of different assemblers available for x86 architectures. This page will list some of them, and will discuss where to get the assemblers, what they are good for, and where they are used the most.

GNU Assembler (GAS)

The GNU assembler is most common as the assembly back-end to the GCC compiler. One of the most compelling reasons to learn to program GAS (as it is frequently abbreviated) is to write inline assembly instructions (assembly code embedded in C source code), as these instructions (when compiled by the gcc) need to be in GAS syntax. GAS uses the AT&T syntax for writing the assembly language, which some people claim is more complicated, but other people say it is more informative.

Note: Recent versions of GCC include the "-masm" option which, when set to "-masm=intel", allow the user to define inline assembly using the Intel syntax. The equivalent option for GAS is "-msyntax=intel" or using the ".intel_syntax" directive.

Microsoft Macro Assembler (MASM)

Microsoft's Macro Assembler, MASM, has been in constant production for many many years. Many people claim that MASM isn't being supported or improved anymore, but Microsoft denies this: MASM is maintained, but is currently in a bug-fixing mode. No new features are currently being added. However, Microsoft is shipping a 64-bit version of MASM with new 64-bit compiler suites. MASM is available from Microsoft as part of Visual C++, as a download from MSDN, or as part of the Microsoft DDK. The latest available version of MASM is version 11.x (ref.: www.masm32.com).

MASM uses the Intel syntax for its instructions, which stands in stark contrast to the AT&T syntax used by the GAS assembler. Most notably, MASM instructions take their operands in reverse order from GAS. This one fact is perhaps the biggest stumbling block for people trying to transition between the two assemblers.

MASM also has a very powerful macro engine, which many programmers use to implement a high-level feel in MASM programs.

External Links

• http://www.masmforum.com

JWASM

JWASM is a 16, 32 and 64-bit assembler for 80x86 platforms, based upon Open Watcom's WASM, and was created by Japheth.

While syntactically compatible with MASM, it is faster, and its source code is freely available under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License, and thus it is free for both commercial and non-commercial use. Furthermore, it supports ELF, and is thus the only cross-platform assembler supporting the popular MASM syntax. JWASM is actively being developed, and is generally regarded as the unofficial successor to MASM.

External Links

• http://www.japheth.de/JWasm.html

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/jwasm/

Netwide Assembler (NASM)

The Netwide Assembler, NASM, was started as an open-source initiative to create a free, retargetable assembler for 80x86 platforms. When the NASM project was started, MASM was still being sold by Microsoft (MASM is currently free), and GAS contained very little error checking capability. GAS was, after all, the backend to GCC, and GCC always feeds GAS syntax-correct code. For this reason, GAS didn't need to interface with the user much, and therefore writing code for GAS was very tough.

NASM uses a syntax which is "similar to Intel's but less complex".

The NASM users manual is found at http://www.nasm.us/doc/ .

Features:

• Cross platform: Like Gas, this assembler runs on nearly every platform, supposedly even on PowerPC Macs (though the code generated will only run on an x86 platform)
• Open Source
• Macro language (code that writes code)

Flat Assembler (FASM)

Although it was written in assembly, it runs on several operating systems, including DOS, DexOS, Linux, Windows, and BSD. Its syntax is similar to TASM's "ideal mode" and NASM's but the macros in this assembler are done differently.

Features:

• Written in itself; and therefore its source code is an example of how to write in this assembler
• Open source
• Clean NASM-like syntax
• Very very fast
• Has macro language (code that writes code)
• Built-in IDE for DOS and Windows
• Creates binary, MZ, PE, ELF, COFF - no linker needed

External Links

• http://flatassembler.net/

YASM Assembler

YASM is a ground-up rewrite of NASM under the new BSD licence. YASM is designed to understand multiple syntaxes natively (NASM and GAS, currently). The primary focus of YASM is to produce "libyasm", a reusable library that can work with code at a low level, and can be easily integrated into other software projects.

External Links

• http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/

HLA

HLA is an assembler front-end created by Randall Hyde and first popularized in his book "The Art of Assembly".

HLA accepts assembly written using a high-level format, and converts the code into another format (MASM or GAS, usually). Another assembler (MASM or GAS) will then assemble the instructions into machine code.

BBC BASIC for WINDOWS (proprietary)

The proprietary BBC BASIC for Windows supports the development of 32 bit x86 assembler targeting user mode for Windows using INTEL syntax, but does not currently permit the generation of standalone EXE's (without the inclusion of a proprietary runtime and environment). Macro assembly is possible by use the BBC BASIC environment, defining macros by means of BASIC functions wrapped around the relevant code.

More information is in the Assembler section of the manual

GAS Syntax

General Information

Examples in this article are created using the AT&T assembly syntax used in GNU AS. The main advantage of using this syntax is its compatibility with the GCC inline assembly syntax. However, this is not the only syntax that is used to represent x86 operations. For example, NASM uses a different syntax to represent assembly mnemonics, operands and addressing modes, as do some High-Level Assemblers. The AT&T syntax is the standard on Unix-like systems but some assemblers use the Intel syntax, or can, like GAS itself, accept both. See X86 assembly language Syntax for a comparative table.

GAS instructions generally have the form mnemonic source, destination. For instance, the following mov instruction:

movb $0x05, %al

This will move the hexadecimal value 5 into the register al.

Operation Suffixes

GAS assembly instructions are generally suffixed with the letters "b", "s", "w", "l", "q" or "t" to determine what size operand is being manipulated.

• b = byte (8 bit).
• s = single (32-bit floating point).
• w = word (16 bit).
• l = long (32 bit integer or 64-bit floating point).
• q = quad (64 bit).
• t = ten bytes (80-bit floating point).

If the suffix is not specified, and there are no memory operands for the instruction, GAS infers the operand size from the size of the destination register operand (the final operand).

Prefixes

When referencing a register, the register needs to be prefixed with a "%". Constant numbers need to be prefixed with a "$".

Address operand syntax

There are up to 4 parameters of an address operand that are presented in the syntax segment:displacement(base register, index register, scale factor). This is equivalent to segment:[base register + displacement + index register * scale factor] in Intel syntax.

The base, index and displacement components can be used in any combination, and every component can be omitted; omitted components are excluded from the calculation above.

movl    -8(%ebp, %edx, 4), %eax  # Full example: load *(ebp + (edx * 4) - 8) into eax
movl    -4(%ebp), %eax           # Typical example: load a stack variable into eax
movl    (%ecx), %edx             # No index: copy the target of a pointer into a register
leal    8(,%eax,4), %eax         # Arithmetic: multiply eax by 4 and add 8
leal    (%edx,%eax,2), %eax      # Arithmetic: multiply eax by 2 and add edx

Introduction

This section is written as a short introduction to GAS. GAS is part of the GNU Project, which gives it the following nice properties:

• It is available on many operating systems.
• It interfaces nicely with the other GNU programming tools, including the GNU C compiler (gcc) and GNU linker (ld).

If you are using a computer with the Linux operating system, chances are you already have GAS installed on your system. If you are using a computer with the Windows operating system, you can install GAS and other useful programming utilities by installing Cygwin or Mingw. The remainder of this introduction assumes you have installed GAS and know how to open a command-line interface and edit files.

Generating assembly

Since assembly language corresponds directly to the operations a CPU performs, a carefully written assembly routine may be able to run much faster than the same routine written in a higher-level language, such as C. On the other hand, assembly routines typically take more effort to write than the equivalent routine in C. Thus, a typical method for quickly writing a program that performs well is to first write the program in a high-level language (which is easier to write and debug), then rewrite selected routines in assembly language (which performs better). A good first step to rewriting a C routine in assembly language is to use the C compiler to automatically generate the assembly language. Not only does this give you an assembly file that compiles correctly, but it also ensures that the assembly routine does exactly what you intended it to.

We will now use the GNU C compiler to generate assembly code, for the purposes of examining the GAS assembly language syntax.

Here is the classic "Hello, world" program, written in C:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    printf("Hello, world!\n");
    return 0;
}

Save that in a file called "hello.c", then type at the prompt:

gcc -o hello_c hello.c

This should compile the C file and create an executable file called "hello_c". If you get an error, make sure that the contents of "hello.c" are correct.

Now you should be able to type at the prompt:

./hello_c

and the program should print "Hello, world!" to the console.

Now that we know that "hello.c" is typed in correctly and does what we want, let's generate the equivalent 32-bit x86 assembly language. Type the following at the prompt:

gcc -S -m32 hello.c

This should create a file called "hello.s" (".s" is the file extension that the GNU system gives to assembly files). On more recent 64-bit systems, the 32-bit source tree may not be included, which will cause a "bits/predefs.h fatal error"; you may replace the -m32 gcc directive with an -m64 directive to generate 64-bit assembly instead. To compile the assembly file into an executable, type:

gcc -o hello_asm -m32 hello.s

(Note that gcc calls the assembler (as) and the linker (ld) for us.) Now, if you type the following at the prompt:

./hello_asm

this program should also print "Hello, world!" to the console. Not surprisingly, it does the same thing as the compiled C file.

Let's take a look at what is inside "hello.s":

        .file   "hello.c"
        .def    ___main;        .scl    2;      .type   32;     .endef
        .text
LC0:
        .ascii "Hello, world!\12\0"
.globl _main
        .def    _main;  .scl    2;      .type   32;     .endef
_main:
        pushl   %ebp
        movl    %esp, %ebp
        subl    $8, %esp
        andl    $-16, %esp
        movl    $0, %eax
        movl    %eax, -4(%ebp)
        movl    -4(%ebp), %eax
        call    __alloca
        call    ___main
        movl    $LC0, (%esp)
        call    _printf
        movl    $0, %eax
        leave
        ret
        .def    _printf;        .scl    2;      .type   32;     .endef

The contents of "hello.s" may vary depending on the version of the GNU tools that are installed; this version was generated with Cygwin, using gcc version 3.3.1.

The lines beginning with periods, like .file, .def, or .ascii are assembler directives — commands that tell the assembler how to assemble the file. The lines beginning with some text followed by a colon, like _main:, are labels, or named locations in the code. The other lines are assembly instructions.

The .file and .def directives are for debugging. We can leave them out:

        .text
LC0:
        .ascii "Hello, world!\12\0"
.globl _main
_main:
        pushl   %ebp
        movl    %esp, %ebp
        subl    $8, %esp
        andl    $-16, %esp
        movl    $0, %eax
        movl    %eax, -4(%ebp)
        movl    -4(%ebp), %eax
        call    __alloca
        call    ___main
        movl    $LC0, (%esp)
        call    _printf
        movl    $0, %eax
        leave
        ret

"hello.s" line-by-line

         .text

This line declares the start of a section of code. You can name sections using this directive, which gives you fine-grained control over where in the executable the resulting machine code goes, which is useful in some cases, like for programming embedded systems. Using. .text by itself tells the assembler that the following code goes in the default section, which is sufficient for most purposes.

 LC0:
         .ascii "Hello, world!\12\0"

This code declares a label, then places some raw ASCII text into the program, starting at the label's location. The \12 specifies a line-feed character, while the \0 specifies a null character at the end of the string; C routines mark the end of strings with null characters, and since we are going to call a C string routine, we need this character here. (NOTE! String in C is an array of datatype char (char[]) and does not exist in any other form, but because one would understand strings as a single entity from the majority of programming languages, it is clearer to express it this way.)

 .globl _main

This line tells the assembler that the label _main is a global label, which allows other parts of the program to see it. In this case, the linker needs to be able to see the _main label, since the startup code with which the program is linked calls _main as a subroutine.

 _main:

This line declares the _main label, marking the place that is called from the startup code.

         pushl   %ebp
         movl    %esp, %ebp
         subl    $8, %esp

These lines save the value of EBP on the stack, then move the value of ESP into EBP, then subtract 8 from ESP. Note that pushl automatically decremented ESP by the appropriate length. The l on the end of each opcode indicates that we want to use the version of the opcode that works with long (32-bit) operands; usually the assembler is able to work out the correct opcode version from the operands, but just to be safe, it's a good idea to include the l, w, b, or other suffix. The percent signs designate register names, and the dollar sign designates a literal value. This sequence of instructions is typical at the start of a subroutine to save space on the stack for local variables; EBP is used as the base register to reference the local variables, and a value is subtracted from ESP to reserve space on the stack (since the Intel stack grows from higher memory locations to lower ones). In this case, eight bytes have been reserved on the stack. We shall see why this space is needed later.

         andl    $-16, %esp

This code ands ESP with 0xFFFFFFF0, aligning the stack with the next lowest 16-byte boundary. An examination of Mingw's source code reveals that this may be for SIMD instructions appearing in the _main routine, which operate only on aligned addresses. Since our routine doesn't contain SIMD instructions, this line is unnecessary.

         movl    $0, %eax
         movl    %eax, -4(%ebp)
         movl    -4(%ebp), %eax

This code moves zero into EAX, then moves EAX into the memory location EBP - 4, which is in the temporary space we reserved on the stack at the beginning of the procedure. Then it moves the memory location EBP - 4 back into EAX; clearly, this is not optimized code. Note that the parentheses indicate a memory location, while the number in front of the parentheses indicates an offset from that memory location.

         call    __alloca
         call    ___main

These functions are part of the C library setup. Since we are calling functions in the C library, we probably need these. The exact operations they perform vary depending on the platform and the version of the GNU tools that are installed.

         movl    $LC0, (%esp)
         call    _printf

This code (finally!) prints our message. First, it moves the location of the ASCII string to the top of the stack. It seems that the C compiler has optimized a sequence of popl %eax; pushl $LC0 into a single move to the top of the stack. Then, it calls the _printf subroutine in the C library to print the message to the console.

         movl    $0, %eax

This line stores zero, our return value, in EAX. The C calling convention is to store return values in EAX when exiting a routine.

         leave

This line, typically found at the end of subroutines, frees the space saved on the stack by copying EBP into ESP, then popping the saved value of EBP back to EBP.

         ret

This line returns control to the calling procedure by popping the saved instruction pointer from the stack.

Communicating directly with the operating system

Note that we only have to call the C library setup routines if we need to call functions in the C library, like printf(). We could avoid calling these routines if we instead communicate directly with the operating system. The disadvantage of communicating directly with the operating system is that we lose portability; our code will be locked to a specific operating system. For instructional purposes, though, let's look at how one might do this under Windows. Here is the C source code, compilable under Mingw or Cygwin:

#include <windows.h>

int main(void) {
    LPSTR text = "Hello, world!\n";
    DWORD charsWritten;
    HANDLE hStdout;

    hStdout = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
    WriteFile(hStdout, text, 14, &charsWritten, NULL);
    return 0;
}

Ideally, you'd want check the return codes of "GetStdHandle" and "WriteFile" to make sure they are working correctly, but this is sufficient for our purposes. Here is what the generated assembly looks like:

         .file   "hello2.c"
         .def    ___main;        .scl    2;      .type   32;     .endef
         .text
 LC0:
         .ascii "Hello, world!\12\0"
 .globl _main
         .def    _main;  .scl    2;      .type   32;     .endef
 _main:
         pushl   %ebp
         movl    %esp, %ebp
         subl    $4, %esp
         andl    $-16, %esp
         movl    $0, %eax
         movl    %eax, -16(%ebp)
         movl    -16(%ebp), %eax
         call    __alloca
         call    ___main
         movl    $LC0, -4(%ebp)
         movl    $-11, (%esp)
         call    _GetStdHandle@4
         subl    $4, %esp
         movl    %eax, -12(%ebp)
         movl    $0, 16(%esp)
         leal    -8(%ebp), %eax
         movl    %eax, 12(%esp)
         movl    $14, 8(%esp)
         movl    -4(%ebp), %eax
         movl    %eax, 4(%esp)
         movl    -12(%ebp), %eax
         movl    %eax, (%esp)
         call    _WriteFile@20
         subl    $20, %esp
         movl    $0, %eax
         leave
         ret

Even though we never use the C standard library, the generated code initializes it for us. Also, there is a lot of unnecessary stack manipulation. We can simplify:

         .text
 LC0:
         .ascii "Hello, world!\12\0"
 .globl _main
 _main:
         pushl   %ebp
         movl    %esp, %ebp
         subl    $4, %esp
         pushl   $-11
         call    _GetStdHandle@4
         pushl   $0
         leal    -4(%ebp), %ebx
         pushl   %ebx
         pushl   $14
         pushl   $LC0
         pushl   %eax
         call    _WriteFile@20
         movl    $0, %eax
         leave
         ret

Analyzing line-by-line:

         pushl   %ebp
         movl    %esp, %ebp
         subl    $4, %esp

We save the old EBP and reserve four bytes on the stack, since the call to WriteFile needs somewhere to store the number of characters written, which is a 4-byte value.

         pushl   $-11
         call    _GetStdHandle@4

We push the constant value STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE (-11) to the stack and call GetStdHandle. The returned handle value is in EAX.

         pushl   $0
         leal    -4(%ebp), %ebx
         pushl   %ebx
         pushl   $14
         pushl   $LC0
         pushl   %eax
         call    _WriteFile@20

We push the parameters to WriteFile and call it. Note that the Windows calling convention is to push the parameters from right-to-left. The load-effective-address (lea) instruction adds -4 to the value of EBP, giving the location we saved on the stack for the number of characters printed, which we store in EBX and then push onto the stack. Also note that EAX still holds the return value from the GetStdHandle call, so we just push it directly.

         movl    $0, %eax
         leave

Here we set our program's return value and restore the values of EBP and ESP using the leave instruction.

Caveats

From The GAS manual's AT&T Syntax Bugs section:

The UnixWare assembler, and probably other AT&T derived ix86 Unix assemblers, generate floating point instructions with reversed source and destination registers in certain cases. Unfortunately, gcc and possibly many other programs use this reversed syntax, so we're stuck with it.

For example

         fsub %st, %st(3)

results in %st(3) being updated to %st - %st(3) rather than the expected %st(3) - %st. This happens with all the non-commutative arithmetic floating point operations with two register operands where the source register is %st and the destination register is %st(i).

Note that even objdump -d -M intel still uses reversed opcodes, so use a different disassembler to check this. See http://bugs.debian.org/372528 for more info.

Additional GAS reading

You can read more about GAS at the GNU GAS documentation page:

https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/as/

• X86 Disassembly/Calling Conventions

Quick reference

Instruction	Meaning
movq %rax, %rbx	rbx ≔ rax
movq $123, %rax	rax ≔ $123$
movq %rsi, -16(%rbp)	mem[rbp-16] ≔ rsi
subq $10, %rbp	rbp ≔ rbp − 10
cmpl %eax %ebx	Compare ebx with eax and set flags accordingly. If eax = ebx, the zero flag is set.
jmp location	unconditional jump
je location	jump to location if equal flag is set
jg, jge, jl, jle, jne, …	>, ≥, <, ≤, ≠, …

MASM Syntax

This page will explain x86 Programming using MASM syntax, and will also discuss how to use the macro capabilities of MASM. Other assemblers, such as NASM and FASM, use syntax different from MASM, similar only in that they all use Intel syntax.

Instruction Order

MASM instructions typically have operands reversed from GAS instructions. for instance, instructions are typically written as Instruction Destination, Source.

The mov instruction, written as follows:

mov al, 05h

will move the value 5 into the al register.

Instruction Suffixes

MASM does not use instruction suffixes to differentiate between sizes (byte, word, dword, etc).

Macros

MASM is known as either the "Macro Assembler", or the "Microsoft Assembler", depending on who you talk to. But no matter where your answers are coming from, the fact is that MASM has a powerful macro engine, and a number of built-in macros available immediately.

MASM directives

MASM has a large number of directives that can control certain settings and behaviors. It has more of them compared to NASM or FASM, for example.

.model small
.stack 100h

.data
msg	db	'Hello world!$'

.code
start:
	mov	ah, 09h   ; Display the message
	lea	dx, msg
	int	21h
	mov	ax, 4C00h  ; Terminate the executable
	int	21h

end start

A Simple Template for MASM510 programming

;template for masm510 programming using simplified segment definition
 title YOUR TITLE HERE
 page 60,132 
 ;tell the assembler to create a nice .lst file for the convenience of error pruning
 .model small 
 ;maximum of 64KB for data and code respectively
 .stack 64
 .data
 ;PUT YOUR DATA DEFINITION HERE
 .code
 main proc far 
 ;This is the entry point,you can name your procedures by altering "main" according to some rules
 mov ax,@DATA 
 ;load the data segment address,"@" is the opcode for fetching the offset of "DATA","DATA" could be change according to your previous definition for data
 mov ds,ax 
 ;assign value to ds,"mov" cannot be used for copying data directly to segment registers(cs,ds,ss,es)
 ;PUT YOUR CODE HERE
 mov ah,4ch
 int 21h 
 ;terminate program by a normal way
 main endp 
 ;end the "main" procedure
 end main 
 ;end the entire program centering around the "main" procedure

HLA Syntax

HLA Syntax

HLA accepts assembly written using a high-level format, and converts the code into another format (MASM or GAS, usually).

In MASM, for instance, we could write the following code:

mov EAX, 0x05

In HLA, this code would become:

mov(0x05, EAX);

HLA uses the same order-of-operations as GAS syntax, but doesn't require any of the name decoration of GAS. Also, HLA uses the parenthesis notation to call an instruction. HLA terminates its lines with a semicolon, similar to C or Pascal.

High-Level Constructs

Some people criticize HLA because it "isn't low-level enough". This is false, because HLA can be as low-level as MASM or GAS, but it also offers the options to use some higher-level abstractions. For instance, HLA can use the following syntax to pass eax as an argument to the Function1 function:

push(eax);
call(Function1);

But HLA also allows the programmer to simplify the process, if they want:

Function1(eax);

This is called the "parenthesis notation" for calling functions.

HLA also contains a number of different loops (do-while, for, until, etc..) and control structures (if-then-else, switch-case) that the programmer can use. However, these high-level constructs come with a caveat: Using them may be simple, but they translate into MASM code instructions. It is usually faster to implement the loops by hand.

FASM Syntax

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FASM, also known as Flat Assembler, is an optimizing assembler for the x86 architecture. FASM is written in assembly, so it can assemble/bootstrap itself. It runs on various operating systems including DOS, Linux, Unix, and Windows. It supports the x86 and x86-64 instruction sets including SIMD extensions MMX, SSE - SSE4, and AVX.

Hexadecimal Numbers

FASM supports all popular syntaxes used to define hexadecimal numbers:

0xbadf00d ; C-Like Syntax
$badf00d  ; Pascal-Like Syntax
0badf00dh  ; h Syntax, requires leading zero to be valid at assembly time

Labels

FASM supports several unique labeling features.

Anonymous Labels

FASM supports labels that use no identifier or label name.

• @@: represents an anonymous label. Any number of anonymous labels can be defined.
• @b refers to the closest @@ that can be found when looking backwards in source. @r and @b are equivalent.
• @f refers to the closest @@ that can be found when looking forward in source.

@@:
    inc eax
    push eax
    jmp @b     ; This will result in a stack fault sooner or later
    jmp @f     ; This instruction will never be hit
@@:            ; if jmp @f was ever hit, the instruction pointer would be set to this anonymous label
    invoke ExitProcess, 0 ; Winasm only

Local Labels

Local labels, which begin with a . (period). You can reference a local label in the context of its global label parent.

entry globallabel

globallabel:
    .locallabelone:
        jmp globallabel2.locallabelone
    .locallabeltwo:
 
globallabel2:
    .locallabelone:
    .locallabeltwo:
        jmp globallabel.locallabelone ; infinite loop

Operators

FASM supports several unique operators to simplify assembly code.

The $ Operator

$ describes the current location in an addressing space. It is used to determine the size of a block of code or data. The MASM equivalent of the $ is the SIZEOF operator.

mystring db "This is my string", 0
mystring.length = $ - mystring

The # Operator

# is the symbol concatenation operator, used for combining multiple symbols into one. It can only be used inside of the body of a macro like rept or a custom/user-defined macro, because it will replace the name of the macro argument supplied with its value.

macro contrived value {
    some#value db 22
}
; ...
contrived 2

; assembles to...
some2 db 22

The ` Operator

` is used to obtain the name of a symbol passed to a macro, converting it to a string.

macro print_contrived value {
    formatter db "%s\n"
    invoke printf, formatter, `value
}
; ...
print_contrived SOMEVALUE

; assembles to...
formatter db "%s\n"
invoke printf, formatter, "SOMEVALUE"

Built In Macros

FASM has several useful built in macros to simplify writing assembly code.

Repetition

The rept directive is used to compact repetitive assembly instructions into a block. The directive begins with the word rept, then a number or variable specifying the number of times the assembly instructions inside of the curly braces proceeding the instruction should be repeated. The counter variable can be aliased to be used as a symbol, or as part of an instruction within the rept block.

rept 2 {
    db "Hello World!", 0Ah, 0
}

; assembles to...
db "Hello World!", 0Ah, 0
db "Hello World!", 0Ah, 0

; and...
rept 2 helloNumber {
    hello#helloNumber db "Hello World!", 0Ah, 0 ; use the symbol concatenation operator '#' to create unique labels hello1 and hello2
}

; assembles to...
hello1 db "Hello World!", 0Ah, 0
hello2 db "Hello World!", 0Ah, 0

Structures

The struc directive allows assembly of data into a format similar to that of a C structure with members. The definition of a struc makes use of local labels to define member values.

struc 3dpoint x, y, z
{
    .x db x,
    .y db y,
    .z db z
}

some 3dpoint 1, 2, 3

; assembles to...
some:
    .x db 1
    .y db 2
    .z db 3

; access a member through some.x, some.y, or some.z for x, y, and z respectively

Custom Macros

FASM supports defining custom macros as a way of assembling multiple instructions or conditional assembly as one larger instruction. They require a name and can have an optional list of arguments, separated by commas.

macro name arg1, arg2, ... {
   ; <macro body>
}

Variable Arguments

Macros can support a variable number of arguments through the square bracket syntax.

macro name arg1, arg2, [varargs] {
   ; <macro body>
}

Required Operands

The FASM macro syntax can require operands in a macro definition using the * operator after each operand.

; all operands required, will not assemble without
macro mov op1*, op2*, op3*
{
    mov op1, op2
    mov op2, op3
}

Operator Overloading

The FASM macro syntax allows for the overloading of the syntax of an instruction, or creating a new instruction. Below, the mov instruction has been overloaded to support a third operand. In the case that none is supplied, the regular move instruction is assembled. Otherwise, the data in op2 is moved to op1 and op2 is replaced by op3.

; not all operands required, though if op1 or op2 are not supplied
; assembly should fail
; could also be defined as 'macro mov op1*, op2*, op3' to force requirement of the first two arguments
macro mov op1, op2, op3
{
    if op3 eq
        mov op1, op2
    else
        mov op1, op2
        mov op2, op3
    end if
}

Hello World

This is a complete example of a Win32 assembly program that prints 'Hello World!' to the console and then waits for the user to press any key before exiting the application.

format PE console                            ; Win32 portable executable console format
entry _start                                 ; _start is the program's entry point

include 'win32a.inc'                         

section '.data' data readable writable       ; data definitions

hello db "Hello World!", 0
stringformat db "%s", 0ah, 0

section '.code' code readable executable     ; code

_start:
        invoke printf, stringformat, hello   ; call printf, defined in msvcrt.dll
        invoke getchar                       ; wait for any key
        invoke ExitProcess, 0                ; exit the process

section '.imports' import data readable      ; data imports

library kernel, 'kernel32.dll',\             ; link to kernel32.dll, msvcrt.dll
        msvcrt, 'msvcrt.dll'

import kernel, \                             ; import ExitProcess from kernel32.dll
       ExitProcess, 'ExitProcess'

import msvcrt, \                             ; import printf and getchar from msvcrt.dll
       printf, 'printf',\
       getchar, '_fgetchar'

This is an example for x86_64 GNU+Linux:

format ELF64 executable 3                 ;; ELF64 Format for GNU+Linux
segment readable executable               ;; Executable code section

;; Some definitions for readabilty purposes

define SYS_exit     60
define SYS_write    1

define stdout       1
define exit_success 0

_start:                                   ;; Entry point for our program
    mov eax, SYS_write                    ;; SYS_write(               // Call the write(2) syscall
    mov edi, stdout                       ;;     STDOUT_FILENO,       // Write to stdout
    mov esi, hello_world                  ;;     hello_world,         // Buffer to write to STDOUT_FILENO: hello_world
    mov edx, hello_world_length           ;;     hello_world_length,  // Buffer length
    syscall                               ;; );

    mov eax, SYS_exit                     ;; SYS_exit(                // Call the exit exit(2) syscall
    mov edi, exit_success                 ;;     EXIT_SUCCESS,        // Exit with success exit code, required if we don't want a segfault
    syscall                               ;; );

segment readable                          ;; Read-only constant data section
    hello_world: db "Hello world", 10     ;; const char *hello_world = "Hello world\n";
    hello_world_length = $ - hello_world  ;; const size_t hello_world_length = strlen(hello_world);

External Links

• FASM website
• FASM official manual
• TAJGA FASM tutorial
• TAJGA FASM preprocessor tutorial

NASM Syntax

The Netwide Assembler is an x86 and x86-64 assembler that uses syntax similar to Intel. It supports a variety of object file formats, including:

1. ELF32/64
2. Linux a.out
3. NetBSD/FreeBSD a.out
4. MS-DOS 16-bit/32-bit object files
5. Win32/64 object files
6. COFF
7. Mach-O 32/64
8. rdf
9. binary

NASM runs on both Unix/Linux and Windows/DOS.

NASM Syntax

The Netwide Assembler (NASM) uses a syntax "designed to be simple and easy to understand, similar to Intel's but less complex". This means that the operand order is dest then src, as opposed to the AT&T style used by the GNU Assembler. For example,

mov ax, 9

loads the number 9 into register ax.

For those using gdb with nasm, you can set gdb to use Intel-style disassembly by issuing the command:

set disassembly-flavor intel

Comments

A single semi-colon is used for comments, and functions the same as double slash in C++: the compiler ignores from the semicolon to the next newline.

Macros

NASM has powerful macro functions, similar to C's preprocessor. For example,

%define newline 0xA
%define func(a, b) ((a) * (b) + 2)

func (1, 22) ; expands to ((1) * (22) + 2)

%macro print 1 ; macro with one argument
  push dword %1 ; %1 means first argument
  call printf
  add  esp, 4
%endmacro

print mystring ; will call printf

Example I/O (Linux and BSD)

To pass the kernel a simple input command on Linux, you would pass values to the following registers and then send the kernel an interrupt signal. To read in a single character from standard input (such as from a user at their keyboard), do the following:

; read a byte from stdin
mov eax, 3		 ; 3 is recognized by the system as meaning "read"
mov ebx, 0		 ; read from standard input
mov ecx, variable        ; address to pass to
mov edx, 1		 ; input length (one byte)
int 0x80                 ; call the kernel

After the int 0x80, eax will contain the number of bytes read. If this number is < 0, there was a read error of some sort.

Outputting follows a similar convention:

; print a byte to stdout
mov eax, 4           ; the system interprets 4 as "write"
mov ebx, 1           ; standard output (print to terminal)
mov ecx, variable    ; pointer to the value being passed
mov edx, 1           ; length of output (in bytes)
int 0x80             ; call the kernel

BSD systems (MacOS X included) use similar system calls, but convention to execute them is different. While on Linux you pass system call arguments in different registers, on BSD systems they are pushed onto stack (except the system call number, which is put into eax, the same way as in Linux). BSD version of the code above:

; read a byte from stdin
mov eax, 3		; sys_read system call
push dword 1		; input length
push dword variable	; address to pass to
push dword 0		; read from standard input
push eax
int 0x80		; call the kernel
add esp, 16		; move back the stack pointer

; write a byte to stdout
mov eax, 4		; sys_write system call
push dword 1		; output length
push dword variable	; memory address
push dword 1		; write to standard output
push eax
int 0x80		; call the kernel
add esp, 16		; move back the stack pointer

; quit the program
mov eax, 1		; sys_exit system call
push dword 0		; program return value
push eax
int 0x80		; call the kernel

Hello World (Linux)

Below we have a simple Hello world example, it lays out the basic structure of a nasm program:

global _start

section .data
        ; Align to the nearest 2 byte boundary, must be a power of two
        align 2
        ; String, which is just a collection of bytes, 0xA is newline
        str:     db 'Hello, world!',0xA
        strLen:  equ $-str

section .bss

section .text
        _start:

;
;       op      dst,  src
;
                                ;
                                ; Call write(2) syscall:
                                ;       ssize_t write(int fd, const void *buf, size_t count)
                                ;
        mov     edx, strLen     ; Arg three: the length of the string
        mov     ecx, str        ; Arg two: the address of the string
        mov     ebx, 1          ; Arg one: file descriptor, in this case stdout
        mov     eax, 4          ; Syscall number, in this case the write(2) syscall: 
        int     0x80            ; Interrupt 0x80        

                                ;
                                ; Call exit(3) syscall
                                ;       void exit(int status)
                                ;
        mov     ebx, 0          ; Arg one: the status
        mov     eax, 1          ; Syscall number:
        int     0x80

In order to assemble, link and run the program we need to do the following:

$ nasm -f elf32 -g helloWorld.asm
$ ld -g helloWorld.o
$ ./a.out

Hello World (Using only Win32 system calls)

In this example we are going to rewrite the hello world example using Win32 system calls. There are several major differences:

1. The intermediate file will be a Microsoft Win32 (i386) object file
2. We will avoid using interrupts since they may not be portable and, this is Windows, not DOS, therefore we need to bring in several calls from kernel32 DLL

global _start

extern _GetStdHandle@4
extern _WriteConsoleA@20
extern _ExitProcess@4

section .data
        str:     db 'hello, world',0x0D,0x0A
        strLen:  equ $-str

section .bss
        numCharsWritten:        resd 1

section .text
        _start:

        ;
        ; HANDLE WINAPI GetStdHandle( _In_  DWORD nStdHandle ) ;
        ;
        push    dword -11       ; Arg1: request handle for standard output
        call    _GetStdHandle@4 ; Result: in eax

        ;
        ; BOOL WINAPI WriteConsole(
        ;       _In_        HANDLE hConsoleOutput,
        ;       _In_        const VOID *lpBuffer,
        ;       _In_        DWORD nNumberOfCharsToWrite,
        ;       _Out_       LPDWORD lpNumberOfCharsWritten,
        ;       _Reserved_  LPVOID lpReserved ) ;
        ;
        push    dword 0         ; Arg5: Unused so just use zero
        push    numCharsWritten ; Arg4: push pointer to numCharsWritten
        push    dword strLen    ; Arg3: push length of output string
        push    str             ; Arg2: push pointer to output string
        push    eax             ; Arg1: push handle returned from _GetStdHandle
        call    _WriteConsoleA@20


        ;
        ; VOID WINAPI ExitProcess( _In_  UINT uExitCode ) ;
        ;
        push    dword 0         ; Arg1: push exit code
        call    _ExitProcess@4

In order to assemble, link and run the program we need to do the following:

$ nasm -f win32 -g helloWorldWin32.asm
$ ld -e _start helloWorldwin32.obj -lkernel32 -o helloWorldWin32.exe

In this example we use the -e command line option when invoking ld to specify the entry point for program execution. Otherwise we would have to use _WinMain@16 as the entry point rather than _start. This example was run under cygwin, in a Windows command prompt the link step would be different. One last note, WriteConsole() does not behave well within a cygwin console, so in order to see output the final exe should be run within a Windows command prompt.

Hello World (Using C libraries and Linking with gcc)

In this example we will rewrite Hello World to use printf(3) from the C library and link using gcc. This has the advantage that going from Linux to Windows requires minimal source code changes and a slightly different assemble and link steps. In the Windows world this has the additional benefit that the linking step will be the same in the Windows command prompt and cygwin. There are several major changes:

1. The "hello, world" string now becomes the format string for printf(3) and therefore needs to be null terminated. This also means we do not need to explicitly specify its length anymore.
2. gcc expects the entry point for execution to be main
3. Microsoft will prefix functions using the cdecl calling convention with a underscore. So main and printf will become _main and _printf respectively in the Windows development environment.

global main

extern printf

section .data
        fmtStr:  db 'hello, world',0xA,0

section .text
        main:

        sub     esp, 4          ; Allocate space on the stack for one 4 byte parameter

        lea     eax, [fmtStr]
        mov     [esp], eax      ; Arg1: pointer to format string
        call    printf         ; Call printf(3):
                                ;       int printf(const char *format, ...);

        add     esp, 4          ; Pop stack once

        ret

In order to assemble, link and run the program we need to do the following.

$ nasm -felf32 helloWorldgcc.asm
$ gcc helloWorldgcc.o -o helloWorldgcc

The Windows version with prefixed underscores:

global _main

extern _printf                ; Uncomment under Windows

section .data
        fmtStr:  db 'hello, world',0xA,0

section .text
        _main:

        sub     esp, 4          ; Allocate space on the stack for one 4 byte parameter

        lea     eax, [fmtStr]
        mov     [esp], eax      ; Arg1: pointer to format string
        call    _printf         ; Call printf(3):
                                ;       int printf(const char *format, ...);

        add     esp, 4          ; Pop stack once

        ret

In order to assemble, link and run the program we need to do the following.

$ nasm -fwin32 helloWorldgcc.asm
$ gcc helloWorldgcc.o -o helloWorldgcc.exe

Floating Point

The ALU is only capable of dealing with integer values. While integers are sufficient for some applications, it is often necessary to use decimals. A highly specialized coprocessor, all part of the FPU – the floating-point unit –, will allow you to manipulate numbers with fractional parts.

x87 Coprocessor

The original x86 family members had a separate math coprocessor that handled floating point arithmetic. The original coprocessor was the 8087, and all FPUs since have been dubbed “x87” chips. Later variants integrated the FPU into the microprocessor itself. Having the capability to manage floating point numbers means a few things:

1. The microprocessor must have space to store floating point numbers.
2. The microprocessor must have instructions to manipulate floating point numbers.

The FPU, even when it is integrated into an x86 chip, is still called the “x87” section. For instance, literature on the subject will frequently call the FPU Register Stack the “x87 Stack”, and the FPU operations will frequently be called the “x87 instruction set”.

The presence of an integrated x87 FPU can be checked using the cpuid instruction.

; after you have verified
; that the cpuid instruction is indeed available:
mov eax, 1     ; argument request feature report
cpuid
xor rax, rax   ; wipe clean accumulator register
bt edx, rax    ; CF ≔ edx[rax]    retrieve bit 0
setc al        ; al ≔ CF

FPU Register Stack

The FPU has an array of eight registers that can be accessed as a stack. There is one top index indicating the current top of the stack. Pushing or popping items to or from the stack will only change the top index and store or wipe data respectively.

st(0) or simply st refers to the register that is currently at the top of the stack. If eight values were stored on the stack, st(7) refers to last element on the stack (i. e. the bottom).

Numbers are pushed onto the stack from memory, and are popped off the stack back to memory. There is no instruction allowing to transfer values directly to or from ALU registers. The x87 stack can only be accessed by FPU instructions ‒ you cannot write mov eax, st(0) ‒ it is necessary to store values to memory if you want to print them, for example.

FPU instructions generally will pop the first two items off the stack, act on them, and push the answer back on to the top of the stack.

Floating point numbers may generally be either 32 bits long, the float data type in the programming language C, or 64 bits long, double in C. However, in order to reduce round-off errors, the FPU stack registers are all 80 bits wide.

Most calling conventions return floating point values in the st(0) register.

Examples

The following program (using NASM syntax) calculates the square root of 123.45.

[org 0x7c00]
[bits 16]

global _start

section .data
	val: dq 123.45   ; define quadword (double precision)

section .bss
	res: resq 1      ; reserve 1 quadword for result

section .text


_start:
    ;initilizes the FPU, avoids inconsistent behavior
    fninit
	; load value into st(0)
	fld qword [val]  ; treat val as an address to a qword
	; compute square root of st(0) and store the result in st(0)
	fsqrt
	; store st(0) at res, and pop it off the x87 stack
	fstp qword [res]
	; the FPU stack is now empty again

	; end of program

Essentially, programs that use the FPU load values onto the stack with fld and its variants, perform operations on these values, then store them into memory with one of the forms of fst, most commonly fstp when you are done with x87, to clean up the x87 stack as required by most calling conventions.

Here is a more complex example that evaluates the Law of Cosines:

;; c^2 = a^2 + b^2 - cos(C)*2*a*b
;; C is stored in ang

global _start

section .data
    a: dq 4.56   ;length of side a
    b: dq 7.89   ;length of side b
    ang: dq 1.5  ;opposite angle to side c (around 85.94 degrees)

section .bss
    c: resq 1    ;the result ‒ length of side c

section .text
    _start:

    fld    qword [a]   ;load a into st0
    fmul   st0, st0    ;st0 = a * a = a^2

    fld    qword [b]   ;load b into st0   (pushing the a^2 result up to st1)
    fmul   st0, st0    ;st0 = b * b = b^2,   st1 = a^2

    faddp              ;add and pop, leaving st0 = old_st0 + old_st1 = a^2 + b^2.  (st1 is freed / empty now)

    fld    qword [ang] ;load angle into st0.  (st1 = a^2 + b^2 which we'll leave alone until later)
    fcos               ;st0 = cos(ang)

    fmul   qword [a]   ;st0 = cos(ang) * a
    fmul   qword [b]   ;st0 = cos(ang) * a * b
    fadd   st0, st0    ;st0 = cos(ang) * a * b + cos(ang) * a * b = 2(cos(ang) * a * b)

    fsubp  st1, st0    ;st1 = st1 - st0 = (a^2 + b^2) - (2 * a * b * cos(ang))
                       ;and pop st0

    fsqrt              ;take square root of st0 = c

    fstp   qword [c]   ;store st0 in c and pop, leaving the x87 stack empty again ‒ and we're done!

    ; don't forget to make an exit system call for your OS,
    ; or execution will fall off the end and decode whatever garbage bytes are next.
    mov   eax, 1                ; __NR_exit
    xor   ebx, ebx
    int   0x80                  ; i386 Linux sys_exit(0)
    ;end program

Floating-Point Instruction Set

You may notice that some of the instructions below differ from another in name by just one letter: a P appended to the end. This suffix signifies that in addition to performing the normal operation, they also Pop the x87 stack after execution is complete.

Original 8087 instructions

FDISI, FENI, FLDENVW, FLDPI, FNCLEX, FNDISI, FNENI, FNINIT, FNSAVEW, FNSTENVW, FRSTORW, FSAVEW, FSTENVW

Data Transfer Instructions

• fld: load floating-point value
• fild: load integer
• fbld
• fbstp
• load a constant on top of the stack
  • fld1: $+1$
  • fldld2e: $\log _{2}e$
  • fldl2t: $\log _{2}10$
  • fldlg2: $\log _{10}2$
  • flln2: $\ln 2$
  • fldz: “positive” $0$

• fst, fstp
• fist, fistp: store integer
• fxch: exchange
• fisttp: store a truncated integer

Arithmetic Instructions

• fabs: absolute value
• fchs: change sign
• fxtract: split exponent and significant

• fadd, faddp, fiadd: addition
• fsub, fsubp, fisub: subtraction
• fsubr, fsubrp, fisubr: reverse subtraction

• fmul, fmulp, fimul
• fsqrt: square root
• fdiv, fdivp, fidiv: division (see also fdiv bug on Wikipedia)
• fdivr, fdivrp, fidivr
• fprem: partial remainder
• fptan
• fpatan
• frndint: round to integer
• fscale: multiply/divide by integral powers of 2
• f2xm1: $2^{x}-1$
• fyl2x: $y\log _{2}x$
• fyl2xp1: $y\log _{2}\left(x+1\right)$

FPU Internal and Other Instructions

• finit: initialize FPU
• fldcw
• flenv
• frstor
• fsave, fnsave
• fstcw, fnstcw
• fstenv, fnstenv
• fstsw, fnstsw

• finccstp and fdecstp: increment or decrement top
• ffree: tag a register as free

• ftst: test
• fcom, fcomp, fcompp: compare floating-point values
• ficom, ficomp: compare with an integer
• fxam: examine a register

• fclex: clear exceptions
• fnop
• fwait does the same as wait.

Added in specific processors

Added with 80287

FSETPM

Added with 80387

FCOS, FLDENVD, FNSAVED, FNSTENVD, FPREM1, FRSTORD, FSAVED, FSIN, FSINCOS, FSTENVD, FUCOM, FUCOMP, FUCOMPP

Added with Pentium Pro

FCMOVB, FCMOVBE, FCMOVE, FCMOVNB, FCMOVNBE, FCMOVNE, FCMOVNU, FCMOVU, FCOMI, FCOMIP, FUCOMI, FUCOMIP, FXRSTOR, FXSAVE

Added with SSE

FXRSTOR, FXSAVE

These are also supported on later Pentium IIs which do not contain SSE support

Added with SSE3

FISTTP (x87 to integer conversion with truncation regardless of status word)

Undocumented instructions

• ffreep: performs ffree st(i) and pops the stack

Further Reading

• X86 Disassembly/Floating Point Numbers
• Floating Point

MMX

MMX is a supplemental instruction set introduced by Intel in 1996. Most of the new instructions are "single instruction, multiple data" (SIMD), meaning that single instructions work with multiple pieces of data in parallel.

MMX has a few problems, though: instructions run slightly slower than the regular arithmetic instructions, the Floating Point Unit (FPU) can't be used when the MMX registers are in use, and MMX registers use saturation arithmetic.

Saturation Arithmetic

In an 8-bit grayscale picture, 255 is the value for pure white, and 0 is the value for pure black. In a regular register (AX, BX, CX ...) if we add one to white, we get black! This is because the regular registers "roll-over" to the next value. MMX registers get around this by a technique called "Saturation Arithmetic". In saturation arithmetic, the value of the register never rolls over to 0 again. This means that in the MMX world, we have the following equations:

255 + 100 = 255
200 + 100 = 255
0 - 100 = 0;
99 - 100 = 0;

This may seem counter-intuitive at first to people who are used to their registers rolling over, but it makes sense in some situations: if we try to make white brighter, it shouldn't become black.

Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) Instructions

The MMX registers are 64 bits wide, but can be broken down as follows:

2 32 bit values
4 16 bit values
8 8 bit values

The MMX registers cannot easily be used for 64 bit arithmetic. Let's say that we have 4 bytes loaded in an MMX register: 10, 25, 128, 255. We have them arranged as such:

MM0: | 10 | 25 | 128 | 255 |

And we do the following pseudo code operation:

MM0 + 10

We would get the following result:

MM0: | 10+10 | 25+10 | 128+10 | 255+10 | = | 20 | 35 | 138 | 255 |

Remember that our arithmetic "saturates" in the last box, so the value doesn't go over 255.

Using MMX, we are essentially performing 4 additions in the time it takes to perform 1 addition using the regular registers, using 4 times fewer instructions.

MMX Registers

There are 8 64-bit MMX registers. To avoid having to add new registers, they were made to overlap with the FPU stack register. This means that the MMX instructions and the FPU instructions cannot be used simultaneously. MMX registers are addressed directly, and do not need to be accessed by pushing and popping in the same way as the FPU registers.

MM7 MM6 MM5 MM4 MM3 MM2 MM1 MM0

These registers correspond to the same numbered FPU registers on the FPU stack.

Usually when you initiate an assembly block in your code that contains MMX instructions, the CPU automatically will disallow floating point instructions. To re-allow FPU operations you must end all MMX code with emms.

The following is a program for GNU AS and GCC which copies 8 bytes from one variable to another and prints the result.

Assembler portion

.globl copy_memory8
.type  copy_memory8, @function
copy_memory8:
    pushl %ebp
    mov  %esp, %ebp
    mov 8(%ebp), %eax
    movq (%eax), %mm0
    mov 12(%ebp), %eax
    movq %mm0, (%eax)
    popl %ebp
    emms
    ret
.size copy_memory8,.-copy_memory8

C portion

#include <stdio.h>

void copy_memory8(void * a, void * b);

int main () {
	long long b = 0x0fffffff00000000;
	long long c = 0x00000000ffffffff;
	printf("%lld == %lld\n", b, c);
	copy_memory8(&b, &c);
	printf("%lld == %lld\n", b, c);
	return 0;
}

MMX Instruction Set

Several suffixes are used to indicate what data size the instruction operates on:

• Byte (8 bits)
• Word (16 bits)
• Double word (32 bits)
• Quad word (64 bits)

The signedness of the operation is also signified by the suffix: US for unsigned and S for signed.

For example, PSUBUSB subtracts unsigned bytes, while PSUBSD subtracts signed double words.

MMX defined over 40 new instructions, listed below.

EMMS, MOVD, MOVQ, PACKSSDW, PACKSSWB, PACKUSWB, PADDB, PADDD, PADDSB, PADDSW, PADDUSB, PADDUSW, PADDW, PAND, PANDN, PCMPEQB, PCMPEQD, PCMPEQW, PCMPGTB, PCMPGTD, PCMPGTW, PMADDWD, PMULHW, PMULLW, POR, PSLLD, PSLLQ, PSLLW, PSRAD, PSRAW, PSRLD, PSRLQ, PSRLW, PSUBB, PSUBD, PSUBSB, PSUBSW, PSUBUSB, PSUBUSW, PSUBW, PUNPCKHBW, PUNPCKHDQ, PUNPCKHWD, PUNPCKLBW, PUNPCKLDQ, PUNPCKLWD, PXOR

SSE

SSE stands for Streaming SIMD Extensions. It is essentially the floating-point equivalent of the MMX instructions. The SSE registers are 128 bits, and can be used to perform operations on a variety of data sizes and types. Unlike MMX, the SSE registers do not overlap with the floating point stack.

Registers

SSE, introduced by Intel in 1999 with the Pentium III, creates eight new 128-bit registers:

XMM0 XMM1 XMM2 XMM3 XMM4 XMM5 XMM6 XMM7

Originally, an SSE register could only be used as four 32-bit single precision floating point numbers (the equivalent of a float in C). SSE2 expanded the capabilities of the XMM registers, so they can now be used as:

• 2 64-bit floating points (double precision)
• 2 64-bit integers
• 4 32-bit floating points (single-precision)
• 4 32-bit integers
• 8 16-bit integers
• 16 8-bit characters (bytes)

Data movement examples

The following program (using NASM syntax) performs data movements using SIMD instructions.

;
; nasm -felf32 -g sseMove.asm
; ld -g sseMove.o
;
global _start

section .data
	align 16
	v1:	dd 1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4	; Four Single precision floats 32 bits each
	v1dp:	dq 1.1, 2.2		; Two Double precision floats 64 bits each
	v2:	dd 5.5, 6.6, 7.7, 8.8
	v2s1:	dd 5.5, 6.6, 7.7, -8.8
	v2s2:	dd 5.5, 6.6, -7.7, -8.8
	v2s3:	dd 5.5, -6.6, -7.7, -8.8
	v2s4:	dd -5.5, -6.6, -7.7, -8.8
	num1:	dd 1.2
	v3:	dd 1.2, 2.3, 4.5, 6.7	; No longer 16 byte aligned
	v3dp:	dq 1.2, 2.3		; No longer 16 byte aligned

section .bss
	mask1:	resd 1
	mask2:	resd 1
	mask3:	resd 1
	mask4:	resd 1

section .text
	_start:

;
;	op	dst,  src
;
				;
				; SSE
				;
				; Using movaps since vectors are 16 byte aligned
	movaps	xmm0, [v1]	; Move four 32-bit(single precision) floats to xmm0 
	movaps	xmm1, [v2]
	movups	xmm2, [v3]	; Need to use movups since v3 is not 16 byte aligned
	;movaps	xmm3, [v3]	; This would seg fault if uncommented 
	movss	xmm3, [num1]	; Move 32-bit float num1 to the least significant element of xmm3
	movss	xmm3, [v3]	; Move first 32-bit float of v3 to the least significant element of xmm3
	movlps	xmm4, [v3]	; Move 64-bits(two single precision floats) from memory to the lower 64-bit elements of xmm4
	movhps	xmm4, [v2]	; Move 64-bits(two single precision floats) from memory to the higher 64-bit elements of xmm4

				; Source and destination for movhlps and movlhps must be xmm registers
	movhlps	xmm5, xmm4	; Transfers the higher 64-bits of the source xmm4 to the lower 64-bits of the destination xmm5
	movlhps	xmm5, xmm4	; Transfers the lower 64-bits of the source xmm4 to the higher 64-bits of the destination xmm5


	movaps	xmm6, [v2s1]
	movmskps eax, xmm6	; Extract the sign bits from four 32-bits floats in xmm6 and create 4 bit mask in eax 
	mov	[mask1], eax	; Should be 8
	movaps	xmm6, [v2s2]
	movmskps eax, xmm6	; Extract the sign bits from four 32-bits floats in xmm6 and create 4 bit mask in eax
	mov	[mask2], eax	; Should be 12
	movaps	xmm6, [v2s3]
	movmskps eax, xmm6	; Extract the sign bits from four 32-bits floats in xmm6 and create 4 bit mask in eax
	mov	[mask3], eax	; Should be 14
	movaps	xmm6, [v2s4]
	movmskps eax, xmm6	; Extract the sign bits from four 32-bits floats in xmm6 and create 4 bit mask in eax
	mov	[mask4], eax	; Should be 15


				;
				; SSE2
				;
	movapd	xmm6, [v1dp]	; Move two 64-bit(double precision) floats to xmm6, using movapd since vector is 16 byte aligned 
				; Next two instruction should have equivalent results to movapd xmm6, [vldp]
	movhpd	xmm6, [v1dp+8]	; Move a 64-bit(double precision) float into the higher 64-bit elements of xmm6 
	movlpd	xmm6, [v1dp]	; Move a 64-bit(double precision) float into the lower 64-bit elements of xmm6
	movupd	xmm6, [v3dp]	; Move two 64-bit floats to xmm6, using movupd since vector is not 16 byte aligned

Arithmetic example using packed singles

The following program (using NASM syntax) performs a few SIMD operations on some numbers.

global _start

section .data
    v1: dd 1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4    ;first set of 4 numbers
    v2: dd 5.5, 6.6, 7.7, 8.8    ;second set
    
section .bss
    v3: resd 4    ;result
    
section .text
    _start:
    
    movups xmm0, [v1]   ;load v1 into xmm0
    movups xmm1, [v2]   ;load v2 into xmm1
    
    addps xmm0, xmm1    ;add the 4 numbers in xmm1 (from v2) to the 4 numbers in xmm0 (from v1), store in xmm0. for the first float the result will be 5.5+1.1=6.6
    mulps xmm0, xmm1    ;multiply the four numbers in xmm1 (from v2, unchanged) with the results from the previous calculation (in xmm0), store in xmm0. for the first float the result will be 5.5*6.6=36.3
    subps xmm0, xmm1    ;subtract the four numbers in v2 (in xmm1, still unchanged) from result from previous calculation (in xmm1). for the first float, the result will be 36.3-5.5=30.8
    
    movups [v3], xmm0   ;store v1 in v3
    
    ;end program
    ret

The result values should be:

30.800    51.480    77.000    107.360

Using the GNU toolchain, you can debug and single-step like this:

 % nasm -felf32 -g ssedemo.asm
 % ld -g ssedemo.o            
 % gdb -q ./a.out                
Reading symbols from a.out...done.
(gdb) break _start
Breakpoint 1 at 0x8048080
(gdb) r
Starting program: a.out 

Breakpoint 1, 0x08048080 in _start ()
(gdb) disass
Dump of assembler code for function _start:
=> 0x08048080 <+0>:	movups 0x80490a0,%xmm0
   0x08048087 <+7>:	movups 0x80490b0,%xmm1
   0x0804808e <+14>:	addps  %xmm1,%xmm0
   0x08048091 <+17>:	mulps  %xmm1,%xmm0
   0x08048094 <+20>:	subps  %xmm1,%xmm0
   0x08048097 <+23>:	movups %xmm0,0x80490c0
End of assembler dump.
(gdb) stepi
0x08048087 in _start ()
(gdb) 
0x0804808e in _start ()
(gdb) p $xmm0
$1 = {v4_float = {1.10000002, 2.20000005, 3.29999995, 4.4000001}, v2_double = {3.6000008549541236, 921.60022034645078}, v16_int8 = {-51, -52, -116, 63, 
    -51, -52, 12, 64, 51, 51, 83, 64, -51, -52, -116, 64}, v8_int16 = {-13107, 16268, -13107, 16396, 13107, 16467, -13107, 16524}, v4_int32 = {1066192077, 
    1074580685, 1079194419, 1082969293}, v2_int64 = {4615288900054469837, 4651317697086436147}, uint128 = 0x408ccccd40533333400ccccd3f8ccccd}
(gdb) x/4f &v1
0x80490a0 <v1>:	1.10000002	2.20000005	3.29999995	4.4000001
(gdb) stepi
0x08048091 in _start ()
(gdb) p $xmm0
$2 = {v4_float = {6.5999999, 8.80000019, 11, 13.2000008}, v2_double = {235929.65665283203, 5033169.0185546875}, v16_int8 = {51, 51, -45, 64, -51, -52, 12, 
    65, 0, 0, 48, 65, 52, 51, 83, 65}, v8_int16 = {13107, 16595, -13107, 16652, 0, 16688, 13108, 16723}, v4_int32 = {1087583027, 1091357901, 1093664768, 
    1095971636}, v2_int64 = {4687346494113788723, 4707162335057281024}, uint128 = 0x4153333441300000410ccccd40d33333}
(gdb)

Debugger commands explained

break

In this case, sets a breakpoint at a given label

stepi

Steps one instruction forward in the program

p

short for print, prints a given register or variable. Registers are prefixed by $ in GDB.

x

short for examine, examines a given memory address. The "/4f" means "4 floats" (floats in GDB are 32-bits). You can use c for chars, x for hexadecimal and any other number instead of 4 of course. The "&" takes the address of v1, as in C.

Shuffling example using shufps

shufps IMM8, arg1, arg2	GAS Syntax
shufps arg2, arg1, IMM8	Intel Syntax

shufps can be used to shuffle packed single-precision floats. The instruction takes three parameters, arg1 an xmm register, arg2 an xmm or a 128-bit memory location and IMM8 an 8-bit immediate control byte. shufps will take two elements each from arg1 and arg2, copying the elements to arg2. The lower two elements will come from arg1 and the higher two elements from arg2.

IMM8 control byte description

IMM8 control byte is split into four group of bit fields that control the output into arg2 as follows:

1. IMM8[1:0] specifies which element of arg1 ends up in the least significant element of arg2:

   IMM8[1:0]	Description
   00b	Copy to the least significant element
   01b	Copy to the second element
   10b	Copy to the third element
   11b	Copy to the most significant element

2. IMM8[3:2] specifies which element of arg1 ends up in the second element of arg2:

   IMM8[3:2]	Description
   00b	Copy to the least significant element
   01b	Copy to the second element
   10b	Copy to the third element
   11b	Copy to the most significant element

3. IMM8[5:4] specifies which element of arg2 ends up in the third element of arg2:

   IMM8[5:4]	Description
   00b	Copy to the least significant element
   01b	Copy to the second element
   10b	Copy to the third element
   11b	Copy to the most significant element

4. IMM8[7:6] specifies which element of arg2 ends up in the most significant element of arg2:

   IMM8[7:6]	Description
   00b	Copy to the least significant element
   01b	Copy to the second element
   10b	Copy to the third element
   11b	Copy to the most significant element

IMM8 Example

Consider the byte 0x1B:

Byte value	0x1B
Nibble value	0x1				0xB
2-bit integer (decimal) value	0		1		2		3
Bit value	0	0	0	1	1	0	1	1
Bit number (0 being LSB)	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	0

The 2-bit values shown above are used to determine which elements are copied to arg2. Bits 7-4 are "indexes" into arg2, and bits 3-0 are "indexes" into the arg1.

• Since bits 7-6 are 0, the least significant element of arg2 is copied to the most significant elements of arg2, bits 127-96.
• Since bits 5-4 are 1, the second element of arg2 is copied to third element of arg2, bits 95-64.
• Since bits 3-2 are 2, the third element of arg1 is copied to the second element of arg2, bits 63-32.
• Since bits 0-1 are 3, the fourth element of arg1 is copied to the least significant elements of arg2, bits (31-0).

Note that since the first and second arguments are equal in the following example, the mask 0x1B will effectively reverse the order of the floats in the XMM register, since the 2-bit integers are 0, 1, 2, 3. Had it been 3, 2, 1, 0 (0xE4) it would be a no-op. Had it been 0, 0, 0, 0 (0x00) it would be a broadcast of the least significant 32 bits.

Example

.data
	.align 16
        v1: .float 1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4
        v2: .float 5.5, 6.6, 7.7, 8.8
        v3: .float 0, 0, 0, 0
 
.text
.global _start 
_start:   
        movaps  v1,%xmm0        # load v1 into xmm0 to xmm6
        movaps  v1,%xmm1	# using movaps since v1 is 16 byte aligned
        movaps  v1,%xmm2
        movaps  v1,%xmm3
        movaps  v1,%xmm4
        movaps  v1,%xmm5
        movaps  v1,%xmm6
 
        shufps $0x1b, %xmm0, %xmm0 # reverse order of the 4 floats
        shufps $0x00, %xmm1, %xmm1 # Broadcast least significant element to all elements
        shufps $0x55, %xmm2, %xmm2 # Broadcast second element to all elements
        shufps $0xAA, %xmm3, %xmm3 # Broadcast third element to all elements
        shufps $0xFF, %xmm4, %xmm4 # Broadcast most significant element to all elements
        shufps $0x39, %xmm5, %xmm5 # Rotate elements right
        shufps $0x93, %xmm6, %xmm6 # Rotate elements left 

        movups  %xmm0,v3        #store v1 in v3
        ret

Using GAS to build an ELF executable

as -g shufps.S -o shufps.o
ld -g shufps.o

Text Processing Instructions

SSE 4.2 adds four string text processing instructions PCMPISTRI, PCMPISTRM, PCMPESTRI and PCMPESTRM. These instructions take three parameters, arg1 an xmm register, arg2 an xmm or a 128-bit memory location and IMM8 an 8-bit immediate control byte. These instructions will perform arithmetic comparison between the packed contents of arg1 and arg2. IMM8 specifies the format of the input/output as well as the operation of two intermediate stages of processing. The results of stage 1 and stage 2 of intermediate processing will be referred to as IntRes1 and IntRes2 respectively. These instructions also provide additional information about the result through overload use of the arithmetic flags(AF, CF, OF, PF, SF and ZF).

The instructions proceed in multiple steps:

1. arg1 and arg2 are compared
2. An aggregation operation is applied to the result of the comparison with the result flowing into IntRes1
3. An optional negation is performed with the result flowing into IntRes2
4. An output in the form of an index(in ECX) or a mask(in XMM0) is produced

IMM8 control byte description

IMM8 control byte is split into four group of bit fields that control the following settings:

1. IMM8[1:0] specifies the format of the 128-bit source data(arg1 and arg2):

   IMM8[1:0]	Description
   00b	unsigned bytes(16 packed unsigned bytes)
   01b	unsigned words(8 packed unsigned words)
   10b	signed bytes(16 packed signed bytes)
   11b	signed words(8 packed signed words)

2. IMM8[3:2] specifies the aggregation operation whose result will be placed in intermediate result 1, which we will refer to as IntRes1. The size of IntRes1 will depend on the format of the source data, 16-bit for packed bytes and 8-bit for packed words:

   IMM8[3:2]	Description
   00b	Equal Any, arg1 is a character set, arg2 is the string to search in. IntRes1[i] is set to 1 if arg2[i] is in the set represented by arg1: arg1 = "aeiou" arg2 = "Example string 1" IntRes1 = 0010001000010000
   01b	Ranges, arg1 is a set of character ranges i.e. "09az" means all characters from 0 to 9 and from a to z., arg2 is the string to search over. IntRes1[i] is set to 1 if arg[i] is in any of the ranges represented by arg1: arg1 = "09az" arg2 = "Testing 1 2 3, T" IntRes1 = 0111111010101000
   10b	Equal Each, arg1 is string one and arg2 is string two. IntRes1[i] is set to 1 if arg1[i] == arg2[i]: arg1 = "The quick brown " arg2 = "The quack green " IntRes1 = 1111110111010011
   11b	Equal Ordered, arg1 is a substring string to search for, arg2 is the string to search within. IntRes1[i] is set to 1 if the substring arg1 can be found at position arg2[i]: arg1 = "he" arg2 = ", he helped her " IntRes1 = 0010010000001000

3. IMM8[5:4] specifies the polarity or the processing of IntRes1, into intermediate result 2, which will be referred to as IntRes2:

   IMM8[5:4]	Description
   00b	Positive Polarity	IntRes2 = IntRes1
   01b	Negative Polarity	IntRes2 = -1 XOR IntRes1
   10b	Masked Positive	IntRes2 = IntRes1
   11b	Masked Negative	IntRes2 = IntRes1 if reg/mem[i] is invalid else ~IntRes1

4. IMM8[6] specifies the output selection, or how IntRes2 will be processed into the output. For PCMPESTRI and PCMPISTRI, the output is an index into the data currently referenced by arg2:

   IMM8[6]	Description
   0b	Least Significant Index	ECX contains the least significant set bit in IntRes2
   1b	Most Significant Index	ECX contains the most significant set bit in IntRes2

5. For PCMPESTRM and PCMPISTRM, the output is a mask reflecting all the set bits in IntRes2:

   IMM8[6]	Description
   0b	Least Significant Index	Bit Mask, the least significant bits of XMM0 contain the IntRes2 16(8) bit mask. XMM0 is zero extended to 128-bits.
   1b	Most Significant Index	Byte/Word Mask, XMM0 contains IntRes2 expanded into byte/word mask

6. IMM8[7] should be set to zero since it has no designed meaning.

The Four Instructions

pcmpistri IMM8, arg2, arg1	GAS Syntax
pcmpistri arg1, arg2, IMM8	Intel Syntax

PCMPISTRI, Packed Compare Implicit Length Strings, Return Index. Compares strings of implicit length and generates index in ECX.

Operands

arg1

• XMM Register

arg2

• XMM Register
• Memory

IMM8

• 8-bit Immediate value

Modified flags

1. CF is reset if IntRes2 is zero, set otherwise
2. ZF is set if a null terminating character is found in arg2, reset otherwise
3. SF is set if a null terminating character is found in arg1, reset otherwise
4. OF is set to IntRes2[0]
5. AF is reset
6. PF is reset

Example

;
; nasm -felf32 -g sse4_2StrPcmpistri.asm -l sse4_2StrPcmpistri.lst
; gcc -o sse4_2StrPcmpistri sse4_2StrPcmpistri.o
;
global main 

extern printf
extern strlen
extern strcmp

section .data
	align 4
	;
	; Fill buf1 with a repeating pattern of ABCD
	;
	buf1:		times 10 dd 0x44434241
	s1:		db "This is a string", 0
	s2:		db "This is a string slightly different string", 0
	s3:		db "This is a str", 0
	fmtStr1:	db "String: %s len: %d", 0x0A, 0
	fmtStr1b:	db "strlen(3): String: %s len: %d", 0x0A, 0
	fmtStr2:	db "s1: =%s= and s2: =%s= compare: %d", 0x0A, 0
	fmtStr2b:	db "strcmp(3): s1: =%s= and s2: =%s= compare: %d", 0x0A, 0

;
; Functions will follow the cdecl call convention
;
section .text
	main:			; Using main since we are using gcc to link

	sub	esp, -16	; 16 byte align the stack
	sub	esp, 16		; space for four 4 byte parameters

	;
	; Null terminate buf1, make it proper C string, length is now 39
	;
	mov	[buf1+39], byte 0x00

	lea	eax, [buf1]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer of string to calculate the length of
	mov	ebx, eax	; Save pointer in ebx since we will use it again
	call	strlenSSE42
	mov	edx, eax	; Copy length of arg1 into edx
	
	mov	[esp+8], edx	; Arg3: length of string
	mov	[esp+4], ebx	; Arg2: pointer to string
	lea	eax, [fmtStr1]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to format string
	call	printf		; Call printf(3):
				;	int printf(const char *format, ...);

	lea	eax, [buf1]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer of string to calculate the length of
	mov	ebx, eax	; Save pointer in ebx since we will use it again
	call	strlen		; Call strlen(3):
				;	size_t strlen(const char *s);
	mov	edx, eax	; Copy length of arg1 into edx
	
	mov	[esp+8], edx	; Arg3: length of string
	mov	[esp+4], ebx	; Arg2: pointer to string
	lea	eax, [fmtStr1b]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to format string
	call	printf		; Call printf(3):
				;	int printf(const char *format, ...);

	lea	eax, [s2]
	mov	[esp+4], eax	; Arg2: pointer to second string to compare
	lea	eax, [s1]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to first string to compare
	call	strcmpSSE42

	mov	[esp+12], eax	; Arg4: result from strcmpSSE42  
	lea	eax, [s2]
	mov	[esp+8], eax	; Arg3: pointer to second string
	lea	eax, [s1]
	mov	[esp+4], eax	; Arg2: pointer to first string
	lea	eax, [fmtStr2]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to format string
	call	printf

	lea	eax, [s2]
	mov	[esp+4], eax	; Arg2: pointer to second string to compare
	lea	eax, [s1]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to first string to compare
	call	strcmp		; Call strcmp(3):
				;	int strcmp(const char *s1, const char *s2);

	mov	[esp+12], eax	; Arg4: result from strcmpSSE42  
	lea	eax, [s2]
	mov	[esp+8], eax	; Arg3: pointer to second string
	lea	eax, [s1]
	mov	[esp+4], eax	; Arg2: pointer to first string
	lea	eax, [fmtStr2b]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to format string
	call	printf

	lea	eax, [s3]
	mov	[esp+4], eax	; Arg2: pointer to second string to compare
	lea	eax, [s1]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to first string to compare
	call	strcmpSSE42

	mov	[esp+12], eax	; Arg4: result from strcmpSSE42  
	lea	eax, [s3]
	mov	[esp+8], eax	; Arg3: pointer to second string
	lea	eax, [s1]
	mov	[esp+4], eax	; Arg2: pointer to first string
	lea	eax, [fmtStr2]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to format string
	call	printf

	lea	eax, [s3]
	mov	[esp+4], eax	; Arg2: pointer to second string to compare
	lea	eax, [s1]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to first string to compare
	call	strcmp		; Call strcmp(3):
				;	int strcmp(const char *s1, const char *s2);

	mov	[esp+12], eax	; Arg4: result from strcmpSSE42  
	lea	eax, [s3]
	mov	[esp+8], eax	; Arg3: pointer to second string
	lea	eax, [s1]
	mov	[esp+4], eax	; Arg2: pointer to first string
	lea	eax, [fmtStr2b]
	mov	[esp], eax	; Arg1: pointer to format string
	call	printf

	call	exit


;
; size_t strlen(const char *s);
;
strlenSSE42:
	push	ebp
	mov	ebp, esp

	mov	edx, [ebp+8]	; Arg1: copy s(pointer to string) to edx 
	;
	; We are looking for null terminating char, so set xmm0 to zero
	;
	pxor	xmm0, xmm0
	mov	eax, -16	; Avoid extra jump in main loop

strlenLoop:
	add	eax, 16
	;
	; IMM8[1:0]	= 00b
	;	Src data is unsigned bytes(16 packed unsigned bytes)
	; IMM8[3:2]	= 10b
	; 	We are using Equal Each aggregation
	; IMM8[5:4]	= 00b
	;	Positive Polarity, IntRes2	= IntRes1
	; IMM8[6]	= 0b
	;	ECX contains the least significant set bit in IntRes2
	;
	pcmpistri	xmm0,[edx+eax], 0001000b
	;
	; Loop while ZF != 0, which means none of bytes pointed to by edx+eax
	; are zero.
	;
	jnz	strlenLoop
	
	;
	; ecx will contain the offset from edx+eax where the first null
	; terminating character was found.
	;
	add	eax, ecx
	pop	ebp
	ret

;
; int strcmp(const char *s1, const char *s2);
;
strcmpSSE42:
	push	ebp
	mov	ebp, esp

	mov	eax, [ebp+8]	; Arg1: copy s1(pointer to string) to eax
	mov	edx, [ebp+12]	; Arg2: copy s2(pointer to string) to edx
	;
	; Subtract s2(edx) from s1(eax). This admititedly looks odd, but we
	; can now use edx to index into s1 and s2. As we adjust edx to move
	; forward into s2, we can then add edx to eax and this will give us
	; the comparable offset into s1 i.e. if we take edx + 16 then:
	;
	;	edx 	= edx + 16		= edx + 16
	;	eax+edx	= eax -edx + edx + 16	= eax + 16
	;
	; therefore edx points to s2 + 16 and eax + edx points to s1 + 16.
	; We thus only need one index, convoluted but effective.
	;
	sub	eax, edx
	sub	edx, 16		; Avoid extra jump in main loop

strcmpLoop:
	add	edx, 16
	movdqu	xmm0, [edx]
	;
	; IMM8[1:0]	= 00b
	;	Src data is unsigned bytes(16 packed unsigned bytes)
	; IMM8[3:2]	= 10b
	; 	We are using Equal Each aggregation
	; IMM8[5:4]	= 01b
	;	Negative Polarity, IntRes2	= -1 XOR IntRes1
	; IMM8[6]	= 0b
	;	ECX contains the least significant set bit in IntRes2
	;
	pcmpistri	xmm0, [edx+eax], 0011000b
	;
	; Loop while ZF=0 and CF=0:
	;
	;	1) We find a null in s1(edx+eax) ZF=1
	;	2) We find a char that does not match CF=1
	;
	ja	strcmpLoop

	;
	; Jump if CF=1, we found a mismatched char
	;
	jc	strcmpDiff

	;
	; We terminated loop due to a null character i.e. CF=0 and ZF=1
	;
	xor	eax, eax	; They are equal so return zero
	jmp	exitStrcmp

strcmpDiff:
	add	eax, edx	; Set offset into s1 to match s2
	;
	; ecx is offset from current poition where two strings do not match,
	; so copy the respective non-matching byte into eax and edx and fill
	; in remaining bits w/ zero.
	;
	movzx	eax, byte[eax+ecx]
	movzx	edx, byte[edx+ecx]
	;
	; If s1 is less than s2 return integer less than zero, otherwise return
	; integer greater than zero.
	;
	sub	eax, edx

exitStrcmp:
	pop	ebp
	ret

exit:
				;
				; Call exit(3) syscall
				;	void exit(int status)
				;
	mov	ebx, 0		; Arg one: the status
	mov	eax, 1		; Syscall number:
	int 	0x80

Expected output:

String: ABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABC len: 39
strlen(3): String: ABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABCDABC len: 39
s1: =This is a string= and s2: =This is a string slightly different string= compare: -32
strcmp(3): s1: =This is a string= and s2: =This is a string slightly different string= compare: -32
s1: =This is a string= and s2: =This is a str= compare: 105
strcmp(3): s1: =This is a string= and s2: =This is a str= compare: 105

pcmpistrm IMM8, arg2, arg1	GAS Syntax
pcmpistrm arg1, arg2, IMM8	Intel Syntax

PCMPISTRM, Packed Compare Implicit Length Strings, Return Mask. Compares strings of implicit length and generates a mask stored in XMM0.

Operands

arg1

• XMM Register

arg2

• XMM Register
• Memory

IMM8

• 8-bit Immediate value

Modified flags

1. CF is reset if IntRes2 is zero, set otherwise
2. ZF is set if a null terminating character is found in arg2, reset otherwise
3. SF is set if a null terminating character is found in arg2, reset otherwise
4. OF is set to IntRes2[0]
5. AF is reset
6. PF is reset

pcmpestri IMM8, arg2, arg1	GAS Syntax
pcmpestri arg1, arg2, IMM8	Intel Syntax

PCMPESTRI, Packed Compare Explicit Length Strings, Return Index. Compares strings of explicit length and generates index in ECX.

Operands

arg1

• XMM Register

arg2

• XMM Register
• Memory

IMM8

• 8-bit Immediate value

Implicit Operands

• EAX holds the length of arg1
• EDX holds the length of arg2

Modified flags

1. CF is reset if IntRes2 is zero, set otherwise
2. ZF is set if EDX is < 16(for bytes) or 8(for words), reset otherwise
3. SF is set if EAX is < 16(for bytes) or 8(for words), reset otherwise
4. OF is set to IntRes2[0]
5. AF is reset
6. PF is reset

pcmpestrm IMM8, arg2, arg1	GAS Syntax
pcmpestrm arg1, arg2, IMM8	Intel Syntax

PCMPESTRM, Packed Compare Explicit Length Strings, Return Mask. Compares strings of explicit length and generates a mask stored in XMM0.

Operands

arg1

• XMM Register

arg2

• XMM Register
• Memory

IMM8

• 8-bit Immediate value

Implicit Operands

• EAX holds the length of arg1
• EDX holds the length of arg2

Modified flags

1. CF is reset if IntRes2 is zero, set otherwise
2. ZF is set if EDX is < 16(for bytes) or 8(for words), reset otherwise
3. SF is set if EAX is < 16(for bytes) or 8(for words), reset otherwise
4. OF is set to IntRes2[0]
5. AF is reset
6. PF is reset

SSE Instruction Set

There are literally hundreds of SSE instructions, some of which are capable of much more than simple SIMD arithmetic. For more in-depth references take a look at the resources chapter of this book.

You may notice that many floating point SSE instructions end with something like PS or SD. These suffixes differentiate between different versions of the operation. The first letter describes whether the instruction should be Packed or Scalar. Packed operations are applied to every member of the register, while scalar operations are applied to only the first value. For example, in pseudo-code, a packed add would be executed as:

v1[0] = v1[0] + v2[0]
v1[1] = v1[1] + v2[1]
v1[2] = v1[2] + v2[2]
v1[3] = v1[3] + v2[3]

While a scalar add would only be:

v1[0] = v1[0] + v2[0]

The second letter refers to the data size: either Single or Double. This simply tells the processor whether to use the register as four 32-bit floats or two 64-bit doubles, respectively.

SSE: Added with Pentium III

Floating-point Instructions:

ADDPS, ADDSS, CMPPS, CMPSS, COMISS, CVTPI2PS, CVTPS2PI, CVTSI2SS, CVTSS2SI, CVTTPS2PI, CVTTSS2SI, DIVPS, DIVSS, LDMXCSR, MAXPS, MAXSS, MINPS, MINSS, MOVAPS, MOVHLPS, MOVHPS, MOVLHPS, MOVLPS, MOVMSKPS, MOVNTPS, MOVSS, MOVUPS, MULPS, MULSS, RCPPS, RCPSS, RSQRTPS, RSQRTSS, SHUFPS, SQRTPS, SQRTSS, STMXCSR, SUBPS, SUBSS, UCOMISS, UNPCKHPS, UNPCKLPS

Integer Instructions:

ANDNPS, ANDPS, ORPS, PAVGB, PAVGW, PEXTRW, PINSRW, PMAXSW, PMAXUB, PMINSW, PMINUB, PMOVMSKB, PMULHUW, PSADBW, PSHUFW, XORPS

SSE2: Added with Pentium 4

Floating-point Instructions:

ADDPD, ADDSD, ANDNPD, ANDPD, CMPPD, CMPSD*, COMISD, CVTDQ2PD, CVTDQ2PS, CVTPD2DQ, CVTPD2PI, CVTPD2PS, CVTPI2PD, CVTPS2DQ, CVTPS2PD, CVTSD2SI, CVTSD2SS, CVTSI2SD, CVTSS2SD, CVTTPD2DQ, CVTTPD2PI, CVTTPS2DQ, CVTTSD2SI, DIVPD, DIVSD, MAXPD, MAXSD, MINPD, MINSD, MOVAPD, MOVHPD, MOVLPD, MOVMSKPD, MOVSD*, MOVUPD, MULPD, MULSD, ORPD, SHUFPD, SQRTPD, SQRTSD, SUBPD, SUBSD, UCOMISD, UNPCKHPD, UNPCKLPD, XORPD

* CMPSD and MOVSD have the same name as the string instruction mnemonics CMPSD (CMPS) and MOVSD (MOVS); however, the former refer to scalar double-precision floating-points whereas the latter refer to doubleword strings.

Integer Instructions:

MOVDQ2Q, MOVDQA, MOVDQU, MOVQ2DQ, PADDQ, PSUBQ, PMULUDQ, PSHUFHW, PSHUFLW, PSHUFD, PSLLDQ, PSRLDQ, PUNPCKHQDQ, PUNPCKLQDQ

SSE3: Added with later Pentium 4

ADDSUBPD, ADDSUBPS, HADDPD, HADDPS, HSUBPD, HSUBPS, MOVDDUP, MOVSHDUP, MOVSLDUP

SSSE3: Added with Xeon 5100 and early Core 2

PSIGNW, PSIGND, PSIGNB, PSHUFB, PMULHRSW, PMADDUBSW, PHSUBW, PHSUBSW, PHSUBD, PHADDW, PHADDSW, PHADDD, PALIGNR, PABSW, PABSD, PABSB

SSE4

SSE4.1: Added with later Core 2

MPSADBW, PHMINPOSUW, PMULLD, PMULDQ, DPPS, DPPD, BLENDPS, BLENDPD, BLENDVPS, BLENDVPD, PBLENDVB, PBLENDW, PMINSB, PMAXSB, PMINUW, PMAXUW, PMINUD, PMAXUD, PMINSD, PMAXSD, ROUNDPS, ROUNDSS, ROUNDPD, ROUNDSD, INSERTPS, PINSRB, PINSRD, PINSRQ, EXTRACTPS, PEXTRB, PEXTRW, PEXTRD, PEXTRQ, PMOVSXBW, PMOVZXBW, PMOVSXBD, PMOVZXBD, PMOVSXBQ, PMOVZXBQ, PMOVSXWD, PMOVZXWD, PMOVSXWQ, PMOVZXWQ, PMOVSXDQ, PMOVZXDQ, PTEST, PCMPEQQ, PACKUSDW, MOVNTDQA

SSE4a: Added with Phenom

LZCNT, POPCNT, EXTRQ, INSERTQ, MOVNTSD, MOVNTSS

SSE4.2: Added with Nehalem

CRC32, PCMPESTRI, PCMPESTRM, PCMPISTRI, PCMPISTRM, PCMPGTQ

3D Now

This section of the x86 Assembly book is a stub. You can help by expanding this section.

3DNow! is AMD's extension of the MMX instruction set (K6-2 and more recent) for with floating-point instruction. The instruction set never gained much popularity, and AMD announced on August 2010 that support for 3DNow! will be dropped in future AMD processors, except for two instructions.

Advanced x86

These "Advanced x86" chapters all cover specialized topics that might not be of interest to the average assembly programmer. However, these chapters should be of some interest to people who would like to work on low-level programming tasks, such as boot loaders, device drivers, and Operating System kernels. A programmer does not need to read the following chapters to say they "know assembly", although they may be interesting. The topics covered in this section are:

• High-Level Languages
• Machine Language Conversion
• Protected Mode
• Global Descriptor Table
• Advanced Interrupts
• Bootloaders

High-Level Languages

Very few projects are written entirely in assembly. It's often used for accessing processor-specific features, optimizing critical sections of code, and very low-level work, but for many applications, it can be simpler and easier to implement the basic control flow and data manipulation routines in a higher level language, like C. For this reason, it is often necessary to interface between assembly language and other languages.

Compilers

The first compilers were simply text translators that converted a high-level language into assembly language. The assembly language code was then fed into an assembler, to create the final machine code output. The GCC compiler still performs this sequence (code is compiled into assembly, and fed to the AS assembler). However, many modern compilers will skip the assembly language and create the machine code directly.

Assembly language code has the benefit that it is in one-to-one correspondence with the underlying machine code. Each machine instruction is mapped directly to a single Assembly instruction. Because of this, even when a compiler directly creates the machine code, it is still possible to interface that code with an assembly language program. The important part is knowing exactly how the language implements its data structures, control structures, and functions. The method in which function calls are implemented by a high-level language compiler is called a calling convention.

The calling convention is a contract between the function and caller of the function and specifies several parameters:

1. How the arguments are passed to the function, and in what order? Are they pushed onto the stack, or are they passed in via the registers?
2. How are return values passed back to the caller? This is usually via registers or on the stack.
3. What processor states are volatile (available for modification)? Volatile registers are available for modification by the function. The caller is responsible for saving the state of those registers if needed. Non-volatile registers are guaranteed to be preserved by the function. The called function is responsible for saving the state of those registers and restoring those registers on exit.
4. The function prologue and epilogue, which sets up the registers and stack for use within the function and then restores the stack and registers before exiting.

C Calling Conventions

CDECL

For C compilers, the CDECL calling convention is the de facto standard. It varies by compiler, but the programmer can specify that a function be implemented using CDECL usually by pre-appending the function declaration with a keyword, for example __cdecl in Visual studio:

int __cdecl func()

in gcc it would be __attribute__( (__cdecl__ )):

int __attribute__((__cdecl__ )) func()

CDECL calling convention specifies a number of different requirements:

1. Function arguments are passed on the stack, in right-to-left order.
2. Function result is stored in EAX/AX/AL
3. Floating point return values will be returned in ST0
4. The function name is pre-appended with an underscore.
5. The arguments are popped from the stack by the caller itself.
6. 8-bit and 16-bit integer arguments are promoted to 32-bit arguments.
7. The volatile registers are: EAX, ECX, EDX, ST0 - ST7, ES and GS
8. The non-volatile registers are: EBX, EBP, ESP, EDI, ESI, CS and DS
9. The function will exit with a RET instruction.
10. The function is supposed to return values types of class or structure via a reference in EAX/AX. The space is supposed to be allocated by the function, which unable to use the stack or heap is left with fixed address in static non-constant storage. This is inherently not thread safe. Many compilers will break the calling convention:
    1. GCC has the calling code allocate space and passes a pointer to this space via a hidden parameter on the stack. The called function writes the return value to this address.
    2. Visual C++ will:
       1. Pass POD return values 32 bits or smaller in the EAX register.
       2. Pass POD return values 33-64 bits in size via the EAX:EDX registers
       3. For non-POD return values or values larger than 64-bits, the calling code will allocate space and passes a pointer to this space via a hidden parameter on the stack. The called function writes the return value to this address.

CDECL functions are capable of accepting variable argument lists. Below is example using cdecl calling convention:

global main

extern printf

section .data
	align 4
	a:	dd 1
	b:	dd 2
	c:	dd 3
	fmtStr:	db "Result: %d", 0x0A, 0

section .bss
	align 4

section .text
				
;
; int func( int a, int b, int c )
; {
;	return a + b + c ;
; }
;
func:
	push	ebp		; Save ebp on the stack
	mov	ebp, esp	; Replace ebp with esp since we will be using
				; ebp as the base pointer for the functions
				; stack.
				;
				; The arguments start at ebp+8 since calling the
				; the function places eip on the stack and the
				; function places ebp on the stack as part of
				; the preamble.
				;
	mov	eax, [ebp+8]	; mov a int eax
	mov	edx, [ebp+12]	; add b to eax
	lea	eax, [eax+edx]	; Using lea for arithmetic adding a + b into eax
	add	eax, [ebp+16]	; add c to eax
	pop	ebp		; restore ebp
	ret			; Returning, eax contains result

	;
	; Using main since we are using gcc to link
	;
	main:

	;
	; Set up for call to func(int a, int b, int c)
	;
	; Push variables in right to left order
	;
	push	dword [c]
	push	dword [b]
	push	dword [a]
	call	func
	add	esp, 12		; Pop stack 3 times 4 bytes
	push	eax
	push	dword fmtStr
	call	printf
	add	esp, 8		; Pop stack 2 times 4 bytes

	;
	; Alternative to using push for function call setup, this is the method
	; used by gcc
	;
	sub	esp, 12		; Create space on stack for three 4 byte variables
	mov	ecx, [b]
	mov	eax, [a]
	mov	[esp+8], dword 4
	mov	[esp+4], ecx
	mov	[esp],	 eax
	call	func
	;push	eax
	;push	dword fmtStr
	mov	[esp+4], eax
	lea	eax, [fmtStr]
	mov	[esp], eax
	call	printf

				;
				; Call exit(3) syscall
				;	void exit(int status)
				;
	mov	ebx, 0		; Arg one: the status
	mov	eax, 1		; Syscall number:
	int 	0x80

In order to assemble, link and run the program we need to do the following:

nasm -felf32 -g cdecl.asm
gcc -o cdecl cdecl.o
./cdecl

STDCALL

STDCALL is the calling convention that is used when interfacing with the Win32 API on Microsoft Windows systems. STDCALL was created by Microsoft, and therefore isn't always supported by non-Microsoft compilers. It varies by compiler but, the programmer can specify that a function be implemented using STDCALL usually by pre-appending the function declaration with a keyword, for example __stdcall in Visual studio:

int __stdcall func()

in gcc it would be __attribute__( (__stdcall__ )):

int __attribute__((__stdcall__ )) func()

STDCALL has the following requirements:

1. Function arguments are passed on the stack in right-to-left order.
2. Function result is stored in EAX/AX/AL
3. Floating point return values will be returned in ST0
4. 64-bits integers and 32/16 bit pointers will be returned via the EAX:EDX registers.
5. 8-bit and 16-bit integer arguments are promoted to 32-bit arguments.
6. Function name is prefixed with an underscore
7. Function name is suffixed with an "@" sign, followed by the number of bytes of arguments being passed to it.
8. The arguments are popped from the stack by the callee (the called function).
9. The volatile registers are: EAX, ECX, EDX, and ST0 - ST7
10. The non-volatile registers are: EBX, EBP, ESP, EDI, ESI, CS, DS, ES, FS and GS
11. The function will exit with a RET n instruction, the called function will pop n additional bytes off the stack when it returns.
12. POD return values 32 bits or smaller will be returned in the EAX register.
13. POD return values 33-64 bits in size will be returned via the EAX:EDX registers.
14. Non-POD return values or values larger than 64-bits, the calling code will allocate space and passes a pointer to this space via a hidden parameter on the stack. The called function writes the return value to this address.

STDCALL functions are not capable of accepting variable argument lists.

For example, the following function declaration in C:

_stdcall void MyFunction(int, int, short);

would be accessed in assembly using the following function label:

_MyFunction@12

Remember, on a 32 bit machine, passing a 16 bit argument on the stack (C "short") takes up a full 32 bits of space.

FASTCALL

FASTCALL functions can frequently be specified with the __fastcall keyword in many compilers. FASTCALL functions pass the first two arguments to the function in registers, so that the time-consuming stack operations can be avoided. FASTCALL has the following requirements:

1. The first 32-bit (or smaller) argument is passed in ECX/CX/CL (see [1])
2. The second 32-bit (or smaller) argument is passed in EDX/DX/DL
3. The remaining function arguments (if any) are passed on the stack in right-to-left order
4. The function result is returned in EAX/AX/AL
5. The function name is prefixed with an "@" symbol
6. The function name is suffixed with an "@" symbol, followed by the size of passed arguments, in bytes.

C++ Calling Conventions (THISCALL)

The C++ THISCALL calling convention is the standard calling convention for C++. In THISCALL, the function is called almost identically to the CDECL convention, but the this pointer (the pointer to the current class) must be passed.

The way that the this pointer is passed is compiler-dependent. Microsoft Visual C++ passes it in ECX. GCC passes it as if it were the first parameter of the function. (i.e. between the return address and the first formal parameter.)

Pascal Calling Conventions

The Pascal convention is essentially identical to cdecl, differing only in that:

1. The parameters are pushed left to right (logical western-world reading order)
2. The routine being called must clean the stack before returning

Additionally, each parameter on the 32-bit stack must use all four bytes of the DWORD, regardless of the actual size of the datum.

This is the main calling method used by Windows API routines, as it is slightly more efficient with regard to memory usage, stack access and calling speed.

Note: the Pascal convention is NOT the same as the Borland Pascal convention, which is a form of fastcall, using registers (eax, edx, ecx) to pass the first three parameters, and also known as Register Convention.

Inline Assembly

C/C++

This Borland C++ example splits byte_data into two bytes in buf, the first containing high 4 bits and low 4 bits in the second.

void ByteToHalfByte(BYTE *buf, int pos, BYTE byte_data)
{
  asm
  {
    mov al, byte_data
    mov ah, al
    shr al, 04h
    and ah, 0Fh
    mov ecx, buf
    mov edx, pos
    mov [ecx+edx], al
    mov [ecx+edx+1], ah
  }
}

Pascal

The FreePascal Compiler (FPC) and GNU Pascal Compiler (GPC) allow asm-blocks. While GPC only accepts AT&T-syntax, FPC can work with both, and allows a direct pass-through to the assembler. The following two examples are written to work with FPC (regarding compiler directives).

program asmDemo(input, output, stderr);

// The $asmMode directive informs the compiler
// which syntax is used in asm-blocks.
// Alternatives are 'att' (AT&T syntax) and 'direct'.
{$asmMode intel}

var
	n, m: longint;
begin
	n := 42;
	m := -7;
	writeLn('n = ', n, '; m = ', m);
	
	// instead of declaring another temporary variable
	// and writing "tmp := n; n := m; m := tmp;":
	asm
		mov rax, n // rax := n
		// xchg can only operate at most on one memory address
		xchg rax, m // swaps values in rax and at m
		mov n, rax // n := rax (holding the former m value)
	// an array of strings after the asm-block closing 'end'
	// tells the compiler which registers have changed
	// (you don't wanna mess with the compiler's notion
	// which registers mean what)
	end ['rax'];
	
	writeLn('n = ', n, '; m = ', m);
end.

In FreePascal you can also write whole functions in assembly language. Also note, that if you use labels, you have to declare them beforehand (FPC requirement):

// the 'assembler' modifier allows us
// to implement the whole function in assembly language
function iterativeSquare(const n: longint): qword; assembler;
// you have to familiarize the compiler with symbols
// which are meant to be jump targets
{$goto on}
label
	iterativeSquare_iterate, iterativeSquare_done;
// note, the 'asm'-keyword instead of 'begin'
{$asmMode intel}
asm
	// ecx is used as counter by loop instruction
	mov ecx, n // ecx := n
	mov rax, 0 // rax := 0
	mov r8, 1 // r8 := 1
	
	cmp ecx, rax // ecx = rax [n = 0]
	je iterativeSquare_done // n = 0
	
	// ensure ecx is positive
	// so we'll run against zero while decrementing
	jg iterativeSquare_iterate // if n > 0 then goto iterate
	neg ecx // ecx := ecx * -1
	
	// n^2 = sum over first abs(n) odd integers
iterativeSquare_iterate:
	add rax, r8 // rax := rax + r8
	inc r8 // inc(r8) twice
	inc r8 // to get next odd integer
	loop iterativeSquare_iterate // dec(ecx)
	// if ecx <> 0 then goto iterate
	
iterativeSquare_done:
	// the @result macro represents the functions return value
	mov @result, rax // result := rax
// note, a list of modified registers (here ['rax', 'ecx', 'r8'])
//    is ignored for pure assembler routines
end;

Further Reading

For an in depth discussion as to how high-level programming constructs are translated into assembly language, see Reverse Engineering.

• Subject:C programming language
• Subject:C++ programming language
• x86 Disassembly/Calling Conventions
• x86 Disassembly/Calling Convention Examples

Machine Language Conversion

Relationship to Machine Code

X86 assembly instructions have a one-to-one relationship with the underlying machine instructions. This means that essentially we can convert assembly instructions into machine instructions with a look-up table. This page will talk about some of the conversions from assembly language to machine language.

CISC and RISC

The x86 architecture is a complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture. Amongst other things, this means that the instructions for the x86 architecture are of varying lengths. This can make the processes of assembly, disassembly and instruction decoding more complicated, because the instruction length needs to be calculated for each instruction.

x86 instructions can be anywhere between 1 and 15 bytes long. The length is defined separately for each instruction, depending on the available modes of operation of the instruction, the number of required operands and more.

8086 instruction format (16 bit)

This is the general instruction form for the 8086 sequentially in main memory:

Prefixes (optional)

Opcode (first byte)

D

W

Opcode 2 (occasional second byte)

MOD

Reg

R/M

Displacement or data (occasional: 1, 2 or 4 bytes)

Prefixes

Optional prefixes which change the operation of the instruction

D

(1 bit) Direction. 1 = Register is Destination, 0 = Register is source.

W

(1 bit) Operation size. 1 = Word, 0 = byte.

Opcode

the opcode is a 6 bit quantity that determines what instruction family the code is

MOD (Mod)

(2 bits) Register mode.

Reg

(3 bits) Register. Each register has an identifier.

R/M (r/m)

(3 bits) Register/Memory operand

Not all instructions have W or D bits; in some cases, the width of the operation is either irrelevant or implicit, and for other operations the data direction is irrelevant.

Notice that Intel instruction format is little-endian, which means that the lowest-significance bytes are closest to absolute address 0. Thus, words are stored low-byte first; the value 1234H is stored in memory as 34H 12H. By convention, most-significant bits are always shown to the left within the byte, so 34H would be 00110100B.

After the initial 2 bytes, each instruction can have many additional addressing/immediate data bytes.

Mod / Reg / R/M tables

Mod	Displacement
00	If r/m is 110, Displacement (16 bits) is address; otherwise, no displacement
01	Eight-bit displacement, sign-extended to 16 bits
10	16-bit displacement (example: MOV [BX + SI]+ displacement,al)
11	r/m is treated as a second "reg" field

Reg	W = 0	W = 1	double word
000	AL	AX	EAX
001	CL	CX	ECX
010	DL	DX	EDX
011	BL	BX	EBX
100	AH	SP	ESP
101	CH	BP	EBP
110	DH	SI	ESI
111	BH	DI	EDI

r/m	Operand address
000	(BX) + (SI) + displacement (0, 1 or 2 bytes long)
001	(BX) + (DI) + displacement (0, 1 or 2 bytes long)
010	(BP) + (SI) + displacement (0, 1 or 2 bytes long)
011	(BP) + (DI) + displacement (0, 1 or 2 bytes long)
100	(SI) + displacement (0, 1 or 2 bytes long)
101	(DI) + displacement (0, 1 or 2 bytes long)
110	(BP) + displacement unless mod = 00 (see mod table)
111	(BX) + displacement (0, 1 or 2 bytes long)

Note the special meaning of MOD 00, r/m 110. Normally, this would be expected to be the operand [BP]. However, instead the 16-bit displacement is treated as the absolute address. To encode the value [BP], you would use mod = 01, r/m = 110, 8-bit displacement = 0.

Example: Absolute addressing

Let's translate the following instruction into machine code:

XOR CL, [12H]

Note that this is XORing CL with the contents of address 12H – the square brackets are a common indirection indicator. The opcode for XOR is "001100dw". D is 1 because the CL register is the destination. W is 0 because we have a byte of data. Our first byte therefore is "00110010".

Now, we know that the code for CL is 001. Reg thus has the value 001. The address is specified as a simple displacement, so the MOD value is 00 and the R/M is 110. Byte 2 is thus (00 001 110b).

Byte 3 and 4 contain the effective address, low-order byte first, 0012H as 12H 00H, or (00010010b) (00000000b)

All together,

XOR CL, [12H] = 00110010 00001110 00010010 00000000 = 32H 0EH 12H 00H

Example: Immediate operand

Now, if we were to want to use an immediate operand, as follows:

XOR CL, 12H

In this case, because there are no square brackets, 12H is immediate: it is the number we are going to XOR against. The opcode for an immediate XOR is 1000000w; in this case, we are using a byte, so w is 0. So our first byte is (10000000b).

The second byte, for an immediate operation, takes the form "mod 110 r/m". Since the destination is a register, mod is 11, making the r/m field a register value. We already know that the register value for CL is 001, so our second byte is (11 110 001b).

The third byte (and fourth byte, if this were a word operation) are the immediate data. As it is a byte, there is only one byte of data, 12H = (00010010b).

All together, then:

XOR CL, 12H = 10000000 11110001 00010010 = 80 F1 12

x86 Instructions (32/64 bit)

The 32-bit instructions are encoded in a very similar way to the 16-bit instructions, except (by default) they act upon dword quantities rather than words. Also, they support a much more flexible memory addressing format, which is made possible by the addition of an SIB "scale-index-base" byte, which follows the ModR/M byte.

Continuing the previous absolute addressing example, we take this input:

XOR CL, [12H]

...and we arrive at the 32-bit machine code like so:

Beginning with the opcode byte first, it remains the same, 32H. Consulting the Intel IA-32 manual, Volume 2C, Chapter 5, "XOR"--we see this opcode defines that a) it requires 2 operands, b) the operands have a direction, and the first operand is the destination, c) the first operand is a register of 8-bits width, d) the second operand is also 8-bit but can be either a register or memory address, and e) the destination register CL will be overridden to contain the result of the operation. This fits our case above, because the first operand is CL ("L" meaning lower 8-bits of the "C" register), and the second operand is a reference to the value stored in memory at 12H (a direct/absolute pointer or address reference). It doesn't look like we need any prefix bytes to get the operand sizes we want.

Now we know we need a ModR/M byte, because the opcode requires it; a) it requires more than zero operands, and b) they are not defined within the opcode or any prefix, and c) there is no Immediate operand. So again we consult the Intel manual, Volume 2A, Chapter 2, Section 2.1.5 "Addressing-Mode Encoding of ModR/M and SIB Bytes", Table 2-2 "32-Bit Addressing Forms with the ModR/M Byte". We know the first operand is going to be our destination register. CL, so we see that maps to REG=001b. Next we look for an Effective Address formula which matches our second operand, which is a displacement with no register (and therefore no segment, base, scale, or index). The nearest match is going to be disp32, but reading the table is tricky because of the footnotes. Basically our formula is not in that table, the one we want requires a SIB byte noted as [--][--], which tells us we need to specify Mod=00b, R/M=100b to enable the SIB byte. Our second byte is therefore 00001100b or 0CH.

We know the SIB byte, if it is used, always follows the ModR/M byte, so we continue to the next Table 2-3 "32-Bit Addressing Forms with the SIB Byte" in the Intel manual, and look for the combination of Scale, Index, and Base values which will give us the disp32 formula we need. Notice there is a footnote [*], this basically tells us to specify Scale=00b, Index=100b, Base=101b which means disp32 with no index, no scale, and no base. So our third byte is now 25H.

We know the Displacement byte, if used, always follows the ModR/M and SIB byte, so here we simply specify our 32-bit unsigned integer value in little-endian, meaning our next four bytes are 12000000H.

Finally, we have our machine code:

XOR CL, [12H] = 00110010 00001100 00100101 00010010 00000000 00000000 00000000 = 32 0C 25 12 00 00 00

This instruction works in both 32-bit Protected mode and 64-bit Long mode.

Protected Mode

This page is going to discuss the differences between real mode and protected mode operations in the x86 processors. It will also discuss how to enter protected mode, and how to exit protected mode. Modern Operating Systems (Windows, Unix, Linux, BSD, etc...) all operate in protected mode, so most assembly language programmers won't need this information. However, this information will be particularly useful to people who are trying to program kernels or bootloaders.

Real Mode Operation

When an x86 processor is powered up or reset, it is in real mode. In real mode, the x86 processor essentially acts like a very fast 8086. Only the base instruction set of the processor can be used. Real mode memory address space is limited to 1MiB of addressable memory, and each memory segment is limited to 64KiB. Real Mode is provided essentially for backwards-compatibility with 8086 and 80186 programs.

Protected Mode Operation

In protected mode operation, the x86 can address 4 GB of address space. This may map directly onto the physical RAM (in which case, if there is less than 4 GB of RAM, some address space is unused), or paging may be used to arbitrarily translate between virtual addresses and physical addresses. In Protected mode, the segments in memory can be assigned protection, and attempts to violate this protection cause a "General Protection" exception.

Protected mode in the 386, amongst other things, is controlled by the Control Registers, which are labelled CR0, CR2, CR3, and CR4.

Protected mode in the 286 is controlled by the Machine Status Word.

Long Mode

Long mode was introduced by AMD with the advent of the Athlon64 processor. Long mode allows the microprocessor to access 64-bit memory space, and access 64-bit long registers. Many 16 and 32-bit instructions do not work (or work correctly) in Long Mode. x86-64 processors in Real mode act exactly like 16 bit chips, and x86-64 chips in protected mode act exactly like 32-bit processors. To unlock the 64-bit capabilities of the chip, the chip must be switched into Long Mode.

Entering Protected Mode

The lowest 5 bits of the control register CR0 contain 5 flags that determine how the system is going to function. This status register has 1 flag that we are particularly interested in: the "Protected Mode Enable" flag (PE). Here are the general steps to entering protected mode:

1. Create a Valid GDT (Global Descriptor Table)
2. Create a 6 byte pseudo-descriptor to point to the GDT
3. 1. If paging is going to be used, load CR3 with a valid page table, PDBR, or PML4.
   2. If PAE (Physical Address Extension) is going to be used, set CR4.PAE = 1.
   3. If switching to long mode, set IA32_EFER.LME = 1.
4. Disable Interrupts (CLI).
5. Load an IDT pseudo-descriptor that has a null limit (this prevents the real mode IDT from being used in protected mode)
6. Set the PE bit (and the PG bit if paging is going to be enabled) of the MSW or CR0 register
7. Execute a far jump (in case of switching to long mode, even if the destination code segment is a 64-bit code segment, the offset must not exceed 32-bit since the far jump instruction is executed in compatibility mode)
8. Load data segment registers with valid selector(s) to prevent GP exceptions when interrupts happen
9. Load SS:(E)SP with a valid stack
10. Load an IDT pseudo-descriptor that points to the IDT
11. Enable Interrupts.

Following sections will talk more about these steps.

Entering Long Mode

To enter Long Mode on a 64-bit x86 processor (x86-64):

1. If paging is enabled, disable paging.
2. If CR4.PAE is not already set, set it.
3. Set IA32_EFER.LME = 1.
4. Load CR3 with a valid PML4 table.
5. Enable paging.
6. At this point you will be in compatibility mode. A far jump may be executed to switch to long mode. However, the offset must not exceed 32-bit.

Using the CR Registers

Many bits of the CR registers only influence behavior in protected mode.

CR0

The CR0 32-bit register has 6 bits that are of interest to us. The low 5 bits of the CR0 register, and the highest bit. Here is a representation of CR0:

CR0: |PG|----RESERVED----|NE|ET|TS|EM|MP|PE|

PE

Bit 0. The Protected Environment flag. This flag puts the system into protected mode when set.

MP

Bit 1. The Monitor Coprocessor flag. This flag controls the operation of the "WAIT" instruction.

EM

Bit 2. The Emulate flag. When this flag is set, coprocessor instructions will generate an exception.

TS

Bit 3. The Task Switched flag. This flag is set automatically when the processor switches to a new task.

ET

Bit 4. The Extension Type flag. ET (also called "R") tells us which type of coprocessor is installed. If ET = 0, an 80287 is installed. if ET = 1, an 80387 is installed.

NE

Bit 5. New exceptions. If this flag is clear, FPU exceptions arrive as interrupts. If set, as exceptions.

PG

Bit 31. The Paging flag. When this flag is set, memory paging is enabled. We will talk more about that in a second.

CR2

CR2 contains a value called the Page Fault Linear Address (PFLA). When a page fault occurs, the address that access was attempted on is stored in CR2.

CR3

The upper 20 bits of CR3 are called the Page Directory Base Register (PDBR). The PDBR holds the physical address of the page directory.

CR4

CR4 contains several flags controlling advanced features of the processor.

Paging

Paging is a special job that microprocessors can perform to make the available amount of memory in a system appear larger and more dynamic than it actually is. In a paging system, a certain amount of space may be laid aside on the hard drive (or on any secondary storage) called the swap file or swap partition. The virtual memory of the system is everything a program can access like memory, and includes physical RAM and the swap space.

The total virtual memory is broken down into chunks or pages of memory, each usually being 4096 bytes (although this number can be different on different systems). These pages can then be moved around throughout the virtual memory, and all pointers inside those pages will be automatically directed to point to the new locations by referencing them to a global paging directory that the microprocessor maintains. The pointer to the current paging directory is stored in the CR3 register.

A page fault occurs when the system attempts to read from a page that is marked as "not present" in the paging directory/table, when the system attempts to write data beyond the boundaries of a currently available page, or when any number of other errors occur in the paging system. When a page fault occurs, the accessed memory address is stored in the CR2 register.

Other Modes

In addition to real, protected, and long modes, there are other modes that x86 processors can enter, for different uses :

• Virtual 8086 Mode: This is a mode in which application software that was written to run in real mode is executed under the supervision of a protected-mode, multi-tasking OS.

• System Management Mode: This mode enables the processor to perform system tasks, like power management, without disrupting the operating system or other software.

Global Descriptor Table

The Global Descriptor Table (GDT) is a table in memory that defines the processor's memory segments. The GDT sets the behavior of the segment registers and helps to ensure that protected mode operates smoothly.

GDTR

The GDT is pointed to by a special register in the x86 chip, the GDT Register, or simply the GDTR. The GDTR is 48 bits long. The lower 16 bits tell the size of the GDT, and the upper 32 bits tell the location of the GDT in memory. Here is a layout of the GDTR:

|LIMIT|----BASE----|

LIMIT is the size of the GDT, and BASE is the starting address. LIMIT is 1 less than the length of the table, so if LIMIT has the value 15, then the GDT is 16 bytes long.

To load the GDTR, the instruction LGDT is used:

lgdt [gdtr]

Where gdtr is a pointer to 6 bytes of memory containing the desired GDTR value. Note that to complete the process of loading a new GDT, the segment registers need to be reloaded. The CS register must be loaded using a far jump:

flush_gdt:
    lgdt [gdtr]
    jmp 0x08:complete_flush
 
complete_flush:
    mov ax, 0x10
    mov ds, ax
    mov es, ax
    mov fs, ax
    mov gs, ax
    mov ss, ax
    ret

GDT

The GDT table contains a number of entries called Segment Descriptors. Each is 8 bytes long and contains information on the starting point of the segment, the length of the segment, and the access rights of the segment.

The following NASM-syntax code represents a single GDT entry:

struc gdt_entry_struct

	limit_low:   resb 2
	base_low:    resb 2
	base_middle: resb 1
	access:      resb 1
	granularity: resb 1
	base_high:   resb 1

endstruc

LDT

Each separate program will receive, from the operating system, a number of different memory segments for use. The characteristics of each local memory segment are stored in a data structure called the Local Descriptor Table (LDT). The GDT contains pointers to each LDT.

Advanced Interrupts

In the chapter on Interrupts, we mentioned the fact that there are such a thing as software interrupts, and they can be installed by the system. This page will go more in-depth about that process, and will talk about how ISRs are installed, how the system finds the ISR, and how the processor actually performs an interrupt.

Interrupt Service Routines

The actual code that is invoked when an interrupt occurs is called the Interrupt Service Routine (ISR). When an exception occurs, a program invokes an interrupt, or the hardware raises an interrupt, the processor uses one of several methods (to be discussed) to transfer control to the ISR, whilst allowing the ISR to safely return control to whatever it interrupted after execution is complete. At minimum, FLAGS and CS:IP are saved and the ISR's CS:IP loaded; however, some mechanisms cause a full task switch to occur before the ISR begins (and another task switch when it ends).

The Interrupt Vector Table

In the original 8086 processor (and all x86 processors in Real Mode), the Interrupt Vector Table controlled the flow into an ISR. The IVT started at memory address 0x00, and could go as high as 0x3FF, for a maximum number of 256 ISRs (ranging from interrupt 0 to 255). Each entry in the IVT contained 2 words of data: A value for IP and a value for CS (in that order). For example, let's say that we have the following interrupt:

int 14h

When we trigger the interrupt, the processor goes to the 21st location in the IVT (14h = 20, indices start at 0). Since each table entry is 4 bytes (2 bytes IP, 2 bytes CS), the microprocessor goes to location [4*14H]=[50H]. At location 50H is the new IP value, and at location 52H is the new CS value. Hardware and software interrupts are all stored in the IVT, so installing a new ISR is as easy as writing a function pointer into the IVT. In newer x86 models, the IVT was replaced with the Interrupt Descriptor Table.

When interrupts occur in real mode, the FLAGS register is pushed onto the stack, followed by CS, then IP. The iret instruction restores CS:IP and FLAGS, allowing the interrupted program to continue unaffected. For hardware interrupts, all other registers (including the general-purpose registers) must be explicitly preserved (e.g. if an interrupt routine makes use of AX, it should push AX when it begins and pop AX when it ends). It is good practice for software interrupts to preserve all registers except those containing return values. More importantly, any registers that are modified must be documented.

The Interrupt Descriptor Table

Since the 286 (but extended on the 386), interrupts may be managed by a table in memory called the Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT). The IDT only comes into play when the processor is in protected mode. Much like the IVT, the IDT contains a listing of pointers to the ISR routine; however, there are now three ways to invoke ISRs:

• Task Gates: These cause a task switch, allowing the ISR to run in its own context (with its own LDT, etc.). Note that IRET may still be used to return from the ISR, since the processor sets a bit in the ISR's task segment that causes IRET to perform a task switch to return to the previous task.
• Interrupt Gates: These are similar to the original interrupt mechanism, placing EFLAGS, CS and EIP on the stack. The ISR may be located in a segment of equal or higher privilege to the currently executing segment, but not of lower privilege (higher privileges are numerically lower, with level 0 being the highest privilege).
• Trap Gates: These are identical to interrupt gates, except they do not clear the interrupt flag.

The following NASM structure represents an IDT entry:

struc idt_entry_struct

	base_low:  resb 2
	sel:       resb 2
	always0:   resb 1
	flags:     resb 1
	base_high: resb 2

endstruc

Field	Interrupt Gate	Trap Gate	Task Gate
base_low	Low word of entry address of ISR		Unused
sel	Segment selector of ISR		TSS descriptor
always0	Bits 5, 6, and 7 should be 0. Bits 0-4 are unused and can be left as zero.		Unused, can be left as zero.
flags	Low 5 bits are (MSB first): 01110, bits 5 and 6 form the DPL, bit 7 is the Present bit.	Low 5 bits are (MSB first): 01111, bits 5 and 6 form the DPL, bit 7 is the Present bit.	Low 5 bits are (MSB first): 00101, bits 5 and 6 form the DPL, bit 7 is the Present bit.
base_high	High word of entry address of ISR		Unused

where:

• DPL is the Descriptor Privilege Level (0 to 3, with 0 being highest privilege)
• The Present bit indicates whether the segment is present in RAM. If this bit is 0, a Segment Not Present fault (Exception 11) will ensue if the interrupt is triggered.

These ISRs are usually installed and managed by the operating system. Only tasks with sufficient privilege to modify the IDT's contents may directly install ISRs.

The ISR itself must be placed in appropriate segments (and, if using task gates, the appropriate TSS must be set up), particularly so that the privilege is never lower than that of executing code. ISRs for unpredictable interrupts (such as hardware interrupts) should be placed in privilege level 0 (which is the highest privilege), so that this rule is not violated while a privilege-0 task is running.

Note that ISRs, particularly hardware-triggered ones, should always be present in memory unless there is a good reason for them not to be. Most hardware interrupts need to be dealt with promptly, and swapping causes significant delay. Also, some hardware ISRs (such as the hard disk ISR) might be required during the swapping process. Since hardware-triggered ISRs interrupt processes at unpredictable times, device driver programmers are encouraged to keep ISRs very short. Often an ISR simply organises for a kernel task to do the necessary work; this kernel task will be run at the next suitable opportunity. As a result of this, hardware-triggered ISRs are generally very small and little is gained by swapping them to the disk.

However, it may be desirable to set the present bit to 0, even though the ISR actually is present in RAM. The OS can use the Segment Not Present handler for some other function, for instance to monitor interrupt calls.

IDT Register

The x86 contains a register whose job is to keep track of the IDT. This register is called the IDT Register, or simply "IDTR". the IDT register is 48 bits long. The lower 16 bits are called the LIMIT section of the IDTR, and the upper 32 bits are called the BASE section of the IDTR:

|LIMIT|----BASE----|

The BASE is the base address of the IDT in memory. The IDT can be located anywhere in memory, so the BASE needs to point to it. The LIMIT field contains the current length of the IDT.

To load the IDTR, the instruction LIDT is used:

lidt [idtr]

To store the IDTR, the instruction SIDT is used:

sub esp,6
sidt [esp]   ;store the idtr to the stack

Interrupt Instructions

int arg

calls the specified interrupt

into 0x04

calls interrupt 4 if the overflow flag is set

iret

returns from an interrupt service routine (ISR).

Default ISR

A good programming practice is to provide a default ISR that can be used as placeholder for unused interrupts. This is to prevent execution of random code if an unrecognized interrupt is raised. The default ISR can be as simple as a single iret instruction.

Note, however, that under DOS (which is in real mode), certain IVT entries contain pointers to important, but not necessarily executable, locations. For instance, entry 0x1D is a far pointer to a video initialisation parameter table for video controllers, entry 0x1F is a pointer to the graphical character bitmap table.

Disabling Interrupts

Sometimes it is important that a routine is not interrupted unexpectedly. For this reason, the x86 allows hardware interrupts to be disabled if necessary. This means the processor will ignore any interrupt signal it receives from the interrupt controller. Usually the controller will simply keep waiting until the processor accepts the interrupt signal, so the interrupts are delayed rather than rejected.

The x86 has an interrupt flag (IF) in the FLAGS register. When this flag is set to 0, hardware interrupts are disabled, otherwise they are enabled. The command cli sets this flag to 0, and sti sets it to 1. Instructions that load values into the FLAGS register (such as popf and iret) may also modify this flag.

Note that this flag does not affect the int instruction or processor exceptions; only hardware-generated interrupts. Also note that in protected mode, code running with less privilege than IOPL will generate an exception if it uses cli or sti. This means that the operating system can disallow "user" programs from disabling interrupts and thus gaining control of the system.

Interrupts are automatically disabled when an interrupt handler begins; this ensures the handler will not be interrupted (unless it issues sti). Software such as device drivers might require precise timing and for this reason should not be interrupted. This can also help avoid problems if the same interrupt occurs twice in a short space of time. Note that the iret instruction restores the state of FLAGS before the interrupt handler began, thus allowing further interrupts to occur after the interrupt handler is complete.

Interrupts should also be disabled when performing certain system tasks, such as when entering protected mode. This consists of performing several steps, and if the processor tried to invoke an interrupt handler before this process was complete, it would be in danger of causing an exception, executing invalid code, trashing memory, or causing some other problem.

Bootloaders

When a computer is turned on, there is some beeping, and some flashing lights, and then a loading screen appears. And then magically, the operating system loads into memory. The question is then raised, how does the operating system load up? What gets the ball rolling? The answer is bootloaders.

What is a Bootloader?

Bootloaders are small pieces of software that play a role in getting an operating system loaded and ready for execution when a computer is turned on. The way this happens varies between different computer designs (early computers required a person to manually set the computer up whenever it was turned on), and often there are several stages in the process of boot loading.

It's crucial to understand that the term "bootloader" is simply a classification of software (and sometimes a blurry one). To the processor, a bootloader is just another piece of code that it blindly executes. There are many different kinds of boot loaders. Some are small, others are large; some follow very simple rules while others show fancy screens and give the user a selection to choose from.

On IBM PC compatibles, the first program to load is the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS). The BIOS performs many tests and initialisations, and if everything is OK, the BIOS's boot loader begins. Its purpose is to load another boot loader! It selects a disk (or some other storage media) from which it loads a secondary boot loader.

In some cases, this boot loader loads enough of an operating system to start running it. In other cases, it loads yet another boot loader from somewhere else. This often happens when multiple operating systems are installed on a single computer; each OS may have its own specific bootloader, with a "central" bootloader that loads one of the specific ones according to the user's selection.

Most bootloaders are written exclusively in assembly language (or even machine code), because they need to be compact, they don't have access to OS routines (such as memory allocation) that other languages might require, they need to follow some unusual requirements, and they make frequent use of low-level features. However some bootloaders, particularly those that have many features and allow user input, are quite heavyweight. These are often written in a combination of assembly and C. The GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) is an example of such.

Some boot loaders are highly OS-specific, while others are less so - certainly the BIOS boot loader is not OS-specific. The MS-DOS boot loader (which was placed on all MS-DOS formatted floppy disks) simply checks if the files IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS exist; if they are not present it displays the error "Non-System disk or disk error" otherwise it loads and begins execution of IO.SYS.

The final stage boot loader may be expected (by the OS) to prepare the computer in some way, for instance by placing the processor in protected mode and programming the interrupt controller. While it would be possible to do these things inside the OS's initialisation procedure, moving them into the bootloader can simplify the OS design. Some operating systems require their bootloader to set up a small, basic GDT (Global Descriptor Table) and enter protected mode, in order to remove the need for the OS to have any 16-bit code. However, the OS might replace this with its own sophisticated GDT soon after.

The Bootsector

The first 512 bytes of a disk are known as the bootsector or Master Boot Record. The boot sector is an area of the disk reserved for booting purposes. If the bootsector of a disk contains a valid boot sector (the last word of the sector must contain the signature 0xAA55), then the disk is treated by the BIOS as bootable.

The Boot Process

When switched on or reset, an x86 processor begins executing the instructions it finds at address FFFF:0000 (at this stage it is operating in Real Mode) (Intel Software Developer's Manual Volume 3 Chapter 9 contradicts this information: Execution starts at the physical address 0xFFFFFFF0, among other things). In IBM PC compatible processors, this address is mapped to a ROM chip that contains the computer's Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) code. The BIOS is responsible for many tests and initialisations; for instance the BIOS may perform a memory test, initialise the interrupt controller and system timer, and test that these devices are working.

Eventually the actual boot loading begins. First the BIOS searches for and initialises available storage media (such as floppy drives, hard disks, CD drives), then it decides which of these it will attempt to boot from. It checks each device for availability (e.g. ensuring a floppy drive contains a disk), then the 0xAA55 signature, in some predefined order (often the order is configurable using the BIOS setup tool). It loads the first sector of the first bootable device it comes across into RAM, and initiates execution.

Ideally, this will be another boot loader, and it will continue the job, making a few preparations, then passing control to something else.

While BIOSes remain compatible with 20-year-old software, they have also become more sophisticated over time. Early BIOSes could not boot from CD drives, but now CD and even DVD booting are standard BIOS features. Booting from USB storage devices is also possible, and some systems can boot from over the network. To achieve such advanced functioning, BIOSes sometimes enter protected mode and the like, but then return to real mode in order to be compatible with legacy boot loaders. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem: bootloaders are written to work with the ubiquitous BIOS, and BIOSes are written to support all those bootloaders, preventing much in the way of new boot loading features.

However, a new bootstrap technology, the UEFI, is beginning to gain momentum. It is much more sophisticated and will not be discussed in this article.

Note also that other computer systems - even some that use x86 processors - may boot in different ways. Indeed, some embedded systems whose software is compact enough to be stored on ROM chips may not need bootloaders at all.

Technical Details

A bootloader runs under certain conditions that the programmer must appreciate in order to make a successful bootloader. The following pertains to bootloaders initiated by the PC BIOS:

1. The first sector of a drive contains its boot loader.
2. One sector is 512 bytes — the last two bytes of which must be 0xAA55 (i.e. 0x55 followed by 0xAA), or else the BIOS will treat the drive as unbootable.
3. If everything is in order, said first sector will be placed at RAM address 0000:7C00, and the BIOS's role is over as it transfers control to 0000:7C00 (that is, it JMPs to that address).
4. The DL register will contain the drive number that is being booted from, useful if you want to read more data from elsewhere on the drive.
5. The BIOS leaves behind a lot of code, both to handle hardware interrupts (such as a keypress) and to provide services to the bootloader and OS (such as keyboard input, disk read, and writing to the screen). You must understand the purpose of the Interrupt Vector Table (IVT), and be careful not to interfere with the parts of the BIOS that you depend on. Most operating systems replace the BIOS code with their own code, but the boot loader can't use anything but its own code and what the BIOS provides. Useful BIOS services include int 10h (for displaying text/graphics), int 13h (disk functions) and int 16h (keyboard input).
6. This means that any code or data that the boot loader needs must either be included in the first sector (be careful not to accidentally execute data) or manually loaded from another sector of the disk to somewhere in RAM. Because the OS is not running yet, most of the RAM will be unused. However, you must take care not to interfere with the RAM that is required by the BIOS interrupt handlers and services mentioned above.
7. The OS code itself (or the next bootloader) will need to be loaded into RAM as well.
8. The BIOS places the stack pointer 512 bytes beyond the end of the boot sector, meaning that the stack cannot exceed 512 bytes. It may be necessary to move the stack to a larger area.
9. There are some conventions that need to be respected if the disk is to be readable under mainstream operating systems. For instance you may wish to include a BIOS Parameter Block on a floppy disk to render the disk readable under most PC operating systems.

Most assemblers will have a command or directive similar to ORG 7C00h that informs the assembler that the code will be loaded starting at offset 7C00h. The assembler will take this into account when calculating instruction and data addresses. If you leave this out, the assembler assumes the code is loaded at address 0 and this must be compensated for manually in the code.

Usually, the bootloader will load the kernel into memory, and then jump to the kernel. The kernel will then be able to reclaim the memory used by the bootloader (because it has already performed its job). However it is possible to include OS code within the boot sector and keep it resident after the OS begins.

Here is a simple bootloader demo designed for NASM:

         org 7C00h
 
         jmp short Start ;Jump over the data (the 'short' keyword makes the jmp instruction smaller)
 
 Msg:    db "Hello World! "
 EndMsg:
 
 Start:  mov bx, 000Fh   ;Page 0, colour attribute 15 (white) for the int 10 calls below
         mov cx, 1       ;We will want to write 1 character
         xor dx, dx      ;Start at top left corner
         mov ds, dx      ;Ensure ds = 0 (to let us load the message)
         cld             ;Ensure direction flag is cleared (for LODSB)
 
 Print:  mov si, Msg     ;Loads the address of the first byte of the message, 7C02h in this case
 
                         ;PC BIOS Interrupt 10 Subfunction 2 - Set cursor position
                         ;AH = 2
 Char:   mov ah, 2       ;BH = page, DH = row, DL = column
         int 10h
         lodsb           ;Load a byte of the message into AL.
                         ;Remember that DS is 0 and SI holds the
                         ;offset of one of the bytes of the message.
 
                         ;PC BIOS Interrupt 10 Subfunction 9 - Write character and colour
                         ;AH = 9
         mov ah, 9       ;BH = page, AL = character, BL = attribute, CX = character count
         int 10h
 
         inc dl          ;Advance cursor
 
         cmp dl, 80      ;Wrap around edge of screen if necessary
         jne Skip
         xor dl, dl
         inc dh
 
         cmp dh, 25      ;Wrap around bottom of screen if necessary
         jne Skip
         xor dh, dh
 
 Skip:   cmp si, EndMsg  ;If we're not at end of message,
         jne Char        ;continue loading characters
         jmp Print       ;otherwise restart from the beginning of the message
 
 
 times 0200h - 2 - ($ - $$)  db 0    ;Zerofill up to 510 bytes
 
         dw 0AA55h       ;Boot Sector signature
 
 ;OPTIONAL:
 ;To zerofill up to the size of a standard 1.44MB, 3.5" floppy disk
 ;times 1474560 - ($ - $$) db 0

To compile the above file, suppose it is called 'floppy.asm', you can use following command:

nasm -f bin -o floppy.img floppy.asm

While strictly speaking this is not a bootloader, it is bootable, and demonstrates several things:

• How to include and access data in the boot sector
• How to skip over included data (this is required for a BIOS Parameter Block)
• How to place the 0xAA55 signature at the end of the sector (NASM will issue an error if there is too much code to fit in a sector)
• The use of BIOS interrupts

On Linux, you can issue a command like

cat floppy.img > /dev/fd0

to write the image to the floppy disk (the image may be smaller than the size of the disk in which case only as much information as is in the image will be written to the disk). A more sophisticated option is to use the dd utility:

 dd if=floppy.img of=/dev/fd0

Under Windows you can use software such as RAWRITE.

Hard disks

Hard disks usually add an extra layer to this process, since they may be partitioned. The first sector of a hard disk is known as the Master Boot Record (MBR). Conventionally, the partition information for a hard disk is included at the end of the MBR, just before the 0xAA55 signature.

The role of the BIOS is no different to before: to read the first sector of the disk (that is, the MBR) into RAM, and transfer execution to the first byte of this sector. The BIOS is oblivious to partitioning schemes - all it checks for is the presence of the 0xAA55 signature.

While this means that one can use the MBR in any way one would like (for instance, omit or extend the partition table) this is seldom done. Despite the fact that the partition table design is very old and limited - it is limited to four partitions - virtually all operating systems for IBM PC compatibles assume that the MBR will be formatted like this. Therefore to break with convention is to render your disk inoperable except to operating systems specifically designed to use it.

In practice, the MBR usually contains a boot loader whose purpose is to load another boot loader - to be found at the start of one of the partitions. This is often a very simple program which finds the first partition marked Active, loads its first sector into RAM, and commences its execution. Since by convention the new boot loader is also loaded to address 7C00h, the old loader may need to relocate all or part of itself to a different location before doing this. Also, ES:SI is expected to contain the address in RAM of the partition table, and DL the boot drive number. Breaking such conventions may render a bootloader incompatible with other bootloaders.

However, many boot managers (software that enables the user to select a partition, and sometimes even kernel, to boot from) use custom MBR code which loads the remainder of the boot manager code from somewhere on disk, then provides the user with options on how to continue the bootstrap process. It is also possible for the boot manager to reside within a partition, in which case it must first be loaded by another boot loader.

Most boot managers support chain loading (that is, starting another boot loader via the usual first-sector-of-partition-to-address-7C00 process) and this is often used for systems such as DOS and Windows. However, some boot managers (notably GRUB) support the loading of a user-selected kernel image. This can be used with systems such as GNU/Linux and Solaris, allowing more flexibility in starting the system. The mechanism may differ somewhat from that of chain loading.

Clearly, the partition table presents a chicken-and-egg problem that is placing unreasonable limitations on partitioning schemes. One solution gaining momentum is the GUID Partition Table; it uses a dummy MBR partition table so that legacy operating systems will not interfere with the GPT, while newer operating systems can take advantage of the many improvements offered by the system.

GNU GRUB

The GRand Unified Bootloader supports the flexible multiboot boot protocol. This protocol aims to simplify the boot process by providing a single, flexible protocol for booting a variety of operating systems. Many free operating systems can be booted using multiboot.

GRUB is extremely powerful and is practically a small operating system. It can read various file systems and thus lets you specify a kernel image by filename as well as separate module files that the kernel may make use of. Command-line arguments can be passed to the kernel as well - this is a nice way of starting an OS in maintenance mode, or "safe mode", or with VGA graphics, and so on. GRUB can provide a menu for the user to select from as well as allowing custom loading parameters to be entered.

Obviously this functionality cannot possibly be provided in 512 bytes of code. This is why GRUB is split into two or three "stages":

• Stage 1 - this is a 512-byte block that has the location of stage 1.5 or stage 2 hardcoded into it. It loads the next stage.
• Stage 1.5 - an optional stage which understands the filesystem (e.g. FAT32 or ext3) where stage 2 resides. It will find out where stage 2 is located and load it. This stage is quite small and is located in a fixed area, often just after Stage 1.
• Stage 2 - this is a much larger image that has all the GRUB functionality.

Note that Stage 1 may be installed to the Master Boot Record of a hard disk, or may be installed in one of the partitions and chainloaded by another boot loader.

Windows can not be loaded using multiboot, but the Windows bootloader (like those of other non-multiboot operating systems) can be chainloaded from GRUB, which isn't quite as good, but does let you boot such systems.

Example of a Boot Loader ‒ Linux Kernel v0.01

SYSSIZE=0x8000
|
|	boot.s
|
| boot.s is loaded at 0x7c00 by the bios-startup routines, and moves itself
| out of the way to address 0x90000, and jumps there.
|
| It then loads the system at 0x10000, using BIOS interrupts. Thereafter
| it disables all interrupts, moves the system down to 0x0000, changes
| to protected mode, and calls the start of system. System then must
| RE-initialize the protected mode in it's own tables, and enable
| interrupts as needed.
|
| NOTE! currently system is at most 8*65536 bytes long. This should be no
| problem, even in the future. I want to keep it simple. This 512 kB
| kernel size should be enough - in fact more would mean we'd have to move
| not just these start-up routines, but also do something about the cache-
| memory (block IO devices). The area left over in the lower 640 kB is meant
| for these. No other memory is assumed to be "physical", i.e. all memory
| over 1Mb is demand-paging. All addresses under 1Mb are guaranteed to match
| their physical addresses.
|
| NOTE1 above is no longer valid in it's entirety. cache-memory is allocated
| above the 1Mb mark as well as below. Otherwise it is mainly correct.
|
| NOTE 2! The boot disk type must be set at compile-time, by setting
| the following equ. Having the boot-up procedure hunt for the right
| disk type is severe brain-damage.
| The loader has been made as simple as possible (had to, to get it
| in 512 bytes with the code to move to protected mode), and continuous
| read errors will result in a unbreakable loop. Reboot by hand. It
| loads pretty fast by getting whole sectors at a time whenever possible.

| 1.44Mb disks:
sectors = 18
| 1.2Mb disks:
| sectors = 15
| 720kB disks:
| sectors = 9

.globl begtext, begdata, begbss, endtext, enddata, endbss
.text
begtext:
.data
begdata:
.bss
begbss:
.text

BOOTSEG = 0x07c0
INITSEG = 0x9000
SYSSEG  = 0x1000			| system loaded at 0x10000 (65536).
ENDSEG	= SYSSEG + SYSSIZE

entry start
start:
	mov	ax,#BOOTSEG
	mov	ds,ax
	mov	ax,#INITSEG
	mov	es,ax
	mov	cx,#256
	sub	si,si
	sub	di,di
	rep
	movw
	jmpi	go,INITSEG
go:	mov	ax,cs
	mov	ds,ax
	mov	es,ax
	mov	ss,ax
	mov	sp,#0x400		| arbitrary value >>512

	mov	ah,#0x03	| read cursor pos
	xor	bh,bh
	int	0x10
	
	mov	cx,#24
	mov	bx,#0x0007	| page 0, attribute 7 (normal)
	mov	bp,#msg1
	mov	ax,#0x1301	| write string, move cursor
	int	0x10

| ok, we've written the message, now
| we want to load the system (at 0x10000)

	mov	ax,#SYSSEG
	mov	es,ax		| segment of 0x010000
	call	read_it
	call	kill_motor

| if the read went well we get current cursor position ans save it for
| posterity.

	mov	ah,#0x03	| read cursor pos
	xor	bh,bh
	int	0x10		| save it in known place, con_init fetches
	mov	[510],dx	| it from 0x90510.
		
| now we want to move to protected mode ...

	cli			| no interrupts allowed !

| first we move the system to it's rightful place

	mov	ax,#0x0000
	cld			| 'direction'=0, movs moves forward
do_move:
	mov	es,ax		| destination segment
	add	ax,#0x1000
	cmp	ax,#0x9000
	jz	end_move
	mov	ds,ax		| source segment
	sub	di,di
	sub	si,si
	mov 	cx,#0x8000
	rep
	movsw
	j	do_move

| then we load the segment descriptors

end_move:

	mov	ax,cs		| right, forgot this at first. didn't work :-)
	mov	ds,ax
	lidt	idt_48		| load idt with 0,0
	lgdt	gdt_48		| load gdt with whatever appropriate

| that was painless, now we enable A20

	call	empty_8042
	mov	al,#0xD1		| command write
	out	#0x64,al
	call	empty_8042
	mov	al,#0xDF		| A20 on
	out	#0x60,al
	call	empty_8042

| well, that went ok, I hope. Now we have to reprogram the interrupts :-(
| we put them right after the intel-reserved hardware interrupts, at
| int 0x20-0x2F. There they won't mess up anything. Sadly IBM really
| messed this up with the original PC, and they haven't been able to
| rectify it afterwards. Thus the BIOS puts interrupts at 0x08-0x0f,
| which is used for the internal hardware interrupts as well. We just
| have to reprogram the 8259's, and it isn't fun.

	mov	al,#0x11		| initialization sequence
	out	#0x20,al		| send it to 8259A-1
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb		| jmp $+2, jmp $+2
	out	#0xA0,al		| and to 8259A-2
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	mov	al,#0x20		| start of hardware int's (0x20)
	out	#0x21,al
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	mov	al,#0x28		| start of hardware int's 2 (0x28)
	out	#0xA1,al
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	mov	al,#0x04		| 8259-1 is master
	out	#0x21,al
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	mov	al,#0x02		| 8259-2 is slave
	out	#0xA1,al
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	mov	al,#0x01		| 8086 mode for both
	out	#0x21,al
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	out	#0xA1,al
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	mov	al,#0xFF		| mask off all interrupts for now
	out	#0x21,al
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	out	#0xA1,al

| well, that certainly wasn't fun :-(. Hopefully it works, and we don't
| need no steenking BIOS anyway (except for the initial loading :-).
| The BIOS-routine wants lots of unnecessary data, and it's less
| "interesting" anyway. This is how REAL programmers do it.
|
| Well, now's the time to actually move into protected mode. To make
| things as simple as possible, we do no register set-up or anything,
| we let the gnu-compiled 32-bit programs do that. We just jump to
| absolute address 0x00000, in 32-bit protected mode.

	mov	ax,#0x0001	| protected mode (PE) bit
	lmsw	ax		| This is it!
	jmpi	0,8		| jmp offset 0 of segment 8 (cs)

| This routine checks that the keyboard command queue is empty
| No timeout is used - if this hangs there is something wrong with
| the machine, and we probably couldn't proceed anyway.
empty_8042:
	.word	0x00eb,0x00eb
	in	al,#0x64	| 8042 status port
	test	al,#2		| is input buffer full?
	jnz	empty_8042	| yes - loop
	ret

| This routine loads the system at address 0x10000, making sure
| no 64kB boundaries are crossed. We try to load it as fast as
| possible, loading whole tracks whenever we can.
|
| in:	es - starting address segment (normally 0x1000)
|
| This routine has to be recompiled to fit another drive type,
| just change the "sectors" variable at the start of the file
| (originally 18, for a 1.44Mb drive)
|
sread:	.word 1			| sectors read of current track
head:	.word 0			| current head
track:	.word 0			| current track
read_it:
	mov ax,es
	test ax,#0x0fff
die:	jne die			| es must be at 64kB boundary
	xor bx,bx		| bx is starting address within segment
rp_read:
	mov ax,es
	cmp ax,#ENDSEG		| have we loaded all yet?
	jb ok1_read
	ret
ok1_read:
	mov ax,#sectors
	sub ax,sread
	mov cx,ax
	shl cx,#9
	add cx,bx
	jnc ok2_read
	je ok2_read
	xor ax,ax
	sub ax,bx
	shr ax,#9
ok2_read:
	call read_track
	mov cx,ax
	add ax,sread
	cmp ax,#sectors
	jne ok3_read
	mov ax,#1
	sub ax,head
	jne ok4_read
	inc track
ok4_read:
	mov head,ax
	xor ax,ax
ok3_read:
	mov sread,ax
	shl cx,#9
	add bx,cx
	jnc rp_read
	mov ax,es
	add ax,#0x1000
	mov es,ax
	xor bx,bx
	jmp rp_read

read_track:
	push ax
	push bx
	push cx
	push dx
	mov dx,track
	mov cx,sread
	inc cx
	mov ch,dl
	mov dx,head
	mov dh,dl
	mov dl,#0
	and dx,#0x0100
	mov ah,#2
	int 0x13
	jc bad_rt
	pop dx
	pop cx
	pop bx
	pop ax
	ret
bad_rt:	mov ax,#0
	mov dx,#0
	int 0x13
	pop dx
	pop cx
	pop bx
	pop ax
	jmp read_track

/*
 * This procedure turns off the floppy drive motor, so
 * that we enter the kernel in a known state, and
 * don't have to worry about it later.
 */
kill_motor:
	push dx
	mov dx,#0x3f2
	mov al,#0
	outb
	pop dx
	ret

gdt:
	.word	0,0,0,0		| dummy

	.word	0x07FF		| 8Mb - limit=2047 (2048*4096=8Mb)
	.word	0x0000		| base address=0
	.word	0x9A00		| code read/exec
	.word	0x00C0		| granularity=4096, 386

	.word	0x07FF		| 8Mb - limit=2047 (2048*4096=8Mb)
	.word	0x0000		| base address=0
	.word	0x9200		| data read/write
	.word	0x00C0		| granularity=4096, 386

idt_48:
	.word	0			| idt limit=0
	.word	0,0			| idt base=0L

gdt_48:
	.word	0x800		| gdt limit=2048, 256 GDT entries
	.word	gdt,0x9		| gdt base = 0X9xxxx
	
msg1:
	.byte 13,10
	.ascii "Loading system ..."
	.byte 13,10,13,10

.text
endtext:
.data
enddata:
.bss
endbss:

Testing the Bootloader

Perhaps the easiest way to test a bootloader is inside a virtual machine, like VirtualBox or VMware or QEMU.

Sometimes it is useful if the bootloader supports the GDB remote debug protocol.

Further Reading

• Embedded Systems/Bootloaders and Bootsectors describes bootloaders for a variety of embedded systems. (Most embedded systems do not have a x86 processor).

x86 Chipset

Chipset

The original IBM computer was based around the 8088 microprocessor, although the 8088 alone was not enough to handle all the complex tasks required by the system. A number of other chips were developed to support the microprocessor unit (MPU), and many of these other chips survive, in one way or another, to this day. The chapters in this section will talk about some of the additional chips in the standard x86 chipset, including the DMA chip, the interrupt controller, and the Timer.

This section currently only contains pages about the programmable peripheral chips, although eventually it could also contain pages about the non-programmable components of the x86 architecture, such as the RAM, the Northbridge, etc.

Many of the components discussed in these chapters have been integrated onto larger die through the years. The DMA and PIC controllers, for instance, are both usually integrated into the Southbridge ASIC. If the PCI Express standard becomes widespread, many of these same functions could be integrated into the PCI Express controller, instead of into the traditional Northbridge/Southbridge chips.

The chips covered in this section are:

• Direct Memory Access
• Programmable Interrupt Controller
• Programmable Interrupt Timer
• Programmable Parallel Interface

Direct Memory Access

Direct Memory Access

The Direct Memory Access chip (DMA) was an important part of the original IBM PC and has become an essential component of modern computer systems. DMA allows other computer components to access the main memory directly, without the processor having to manage the data flow. This is important because in many systems, the processor is a data-flow bottleneck, and it would slow down the system considerably to have the MPU have to handle every memory transaction.

The original DMA chip was known as the 8237-A chip, although modern variants may be one of many different models.

DMA Operation

The DMA chip can be used to move large blocks of data between two memory locations, or it can be used to move blocks of data from a peripheral device to memory. For instance, DMA is used frequently to move data between the PCI bus to the expansion cards, and it is also used to manage data transmissions between primary memory (RAM) and the secondary memory (HDD). While the DMA is operational, it has control over the memory bus, and the MPU may not access the bus for any reason. The MPU may continue operating on the instructions that are stored in its caches, but once the caches are empty, or once a memory access instruction is encountered, the MPU must wait for the DMA operation to complete. The DMA can manage memory operations much more quickly than the MPU can, so the wait times are usually not a large speed problem.

DMA Channels

The DMA chip has up to 8 DMA channels, and one of these channels can be used to cascade a second DMA chip for a total of 14 channels available. Each channel can be programmed to read from a specific source, to write to a specific source, etc. Because of this, the DMA has a number of dedicated I/O addresses available, for writing to the necessary control registers. The DMA uses addresses 0x0000-0x000F for standard control registers, and 0x0080-0x0083 for page registers.

Programmable Interrupt Controller

The original IBM PC contained a chip known as the Programmable Interrupt Controller to handle the incoming interrupt requests from the system, and to send them in an orderly fashion to the MPU for processing. The original interrupt controller was the 8259A chip, although modern computers will have a more recent variant. The most common replacement is the APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) which is essentially an extended version of the old PIC chip to maintain backwards compatibility. This page will cover the 8259A.

Function

Path of an interrupt, from hardware to CPU

The function of the 8259A is actually relatively simple. Each PIC has 8 input lines, called Interrupt Requests (IRQ), numbered from 0 to 7. When one of these lines goes high, the PIC alerts the CPU and sends the appropriate interrupt number. This number is calculated by adding the IRQ number (0 to 7) to an internal "vector offset" value. The CPU uses this value to execute an appropriate Interrupt Service Routine. (For further information, see Advanced Interrupts).

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that, because each system has two PICS, a "master" and a "slave". So when the slave raises an interrupt, it's actually sent to the master, which sends that to the CPU. In this way, interrupts cascade and a processor can have 16 IRQ lines. Of these 16, one is needed for the two PIC chips to interface with each other, so the number of available IRQs is decreased to 15.

While cli and sti can be used to disable and enable all hardware interrupts, it's sometimes desirable to selectively disable interrupts from certain devices. For this purpose, PICs have an internal 8-bit register called the Interrupt Mask Register (IMR). The bits in this register determine which IRQs are passed on to the CPU. If an IRQ is raised but the corresponding bit in the IMR is set, it is ignored and nothing is sent to the CPU.

IRQs

Of the 15 usable IRQs, some are universally associated with one type of device:

• IRQ 0 ‒ system timer
• IRQ 1 — keyboard controller
• IRQ 3 — serial port COM2
• IRQ 4 — serial port COM1
• IRQ 5 — line print terminal 2
• IRQ 6 — floppy controller
• IRQ 7 — line print terminal 1
• IRQ 8 — RTC timer
• IRQ 9 - X86_Assembly/ACPI
• IRQ 12 — mouse controller
• IRQ 13 — math co-processor
• IRQ 14 — ATA channel 1
• IRQ 15 — ATA channel 2

Programming

Each of the system's two PICs are assigned a command port and a data port:

	PIC1	PIC2
Command	0x20	0xA0
Data	0x21	0xA1

Masking

Normally, reading from the data port returns the IMR register (see above), and writing to it sets the register. We can use this to set which IRQs should be ignored. For example, to disable IRQ 6 (floppy controller) from firing:

in ax, 0x21
or ax, (1 << 6)
out 0x21, ax

In the same way, to disable IRQ 12 (mouse controller):

in ax, 0xA1
or ax, (1 << 4)   ;IRQ 12 is actually IRQ 4 of PIC2
out 0xA1, ax

Remapping

Another common task, often performed during the initialization of an operating system, is remapping the PICs. That is, changing their internal vector offsets, thereby altering the interrupt numbers they send. The initial vector offset of PIC1 is 8, so it raises interrupt numbers 8 to 15. Unfortunately, some of the low 32 interrupts are used by the CPU for exceptions (divide-by-zero, page fault, etc.), causing a conflict between hardware and software interrupts. The usual solution to this is remapping the PIC1 to start at 32, and often the PIC2 right after it at 40. This requires a complete restart of the PICs, but is not actually too difficult, requiring just eight outs.

mov al, 0x11
out 0x20, al     ;restart PIC1
out 0xA0, al     ;restart PIC2

mov al, 0x20
out 0x21, al     ;PIC1 now starts at 32
mov al, 0x28
out 0xA1, al     ;PIC2 now starts at 40

mov al, 0x04
out 0x21, al     ;setup cascading
mov al, 0x02
out 0xA1, al

mov al, 0x01
out 0x21, al
out 0xA1, al     ;done!

Programmable Interrupt Timer

The Programmable Interval Timer (PIT) is an essential component of modern computers, especially in a multi-tasking environment. The PIT chip can be made ‒ by setting various register values ‒ to count up or down, at certain rates, and to trigger interrupts at certain times. The timer can be set into a cyclic mode, so that when it triggers it automatically starts counting again, or it can be set into a one-time-only countdown mode.

On newer hardware, a HPET (High Precision Event Timer), which is an evolution of the PIT concept, is likely to be available.

Function

The PIT contains a crystal oscillator which emits a signal 1193182 hz. This output frequency is divided by three different values to provide three output channels to the CPU. Channel 0 is used as a system timer by most operating systems. Channel 1 was used to refresh the DRAM, but is no longer used and may not even be accessible. Channel 2 is used to control the PC speaker. Of these, channel 0 is the most frequently encountered.

To make the PIT fire at a certain frequency f, you need to figure out an integer x, such that 1193182 / x = f. This is a trivially solved problem which results in the formula:

x = 1193182 / f

How this division actually works is that each divisor is saved in an internal register. On every clock pulse, the register is decremented. Only when it reaches 0 is the clock pulse allowed to continue on to the CPU. Higher divisors result in lower frequencies, and vice versa.

Note that because the divisor is 16 bits, and a value of 0 is interpreted as 65536, there are limits on the producible frequencies:

max = 1193182 / 1 = 1193182 hz

min = 1193182 / 65536 ≈ 18.2065 hz

This final value is also the resolution of the frequency, that is, each consecutive possible frequency differs by 18.2065 hz.

Programming

The PIT is accessed via four ports, three for the three channels and one for commands:

Channel 0	0x40
Channel 1	0x41
Channel 2	0x42
Command	0x43

One commonly performed task is setting the frequency of the channel 0, the system timer. If a frequency of 100 hz is desired, we see that the necessary divisor is 1193182 / 100 = 11931. This value must be sent to the PIT split into a high and low byte.

mov al, 0x36
out 0x43, al    ;tell the PIT which channel we're setting

mov ax, 11931
out 0x40, al    ;send low byte
mov al, ah
out 0x40, al    ;send high byte

Programmable Parallel Interface

This section of the x86 Assembly book is a stub. You can help by expanding this section.

The Original x86 PC had another peripheral chip onboard known as the 8255A Programmable Peripheral Interface (PPI). The 8255A, and variants (82C55A, 82B55A, etc.) controlled the communications tasks with the outside world. The PPI chips can be programmed to operate in different I/O modes.

Resources

Wikimedia Sources

• x86 Disassembly
• Operating System Design
• Embedded Systems
• Floating Point
• C Programming
• C++ Programming

Books

• Yurichev, Dennis, "An Introduction To Reverse Engineering for Beginners". Online book: http://yurichev.com/writings/RE_for_beginners-en.pdf
• Carter, Paul, "PC Assembly Tutorial". Online book. http://www.drpaulcarter.com/pcasm/index.php
• Hyde, Randall, "The Art of Assembly Language", No Starch Press, 2003. ISBN 1886411972. http://www.artofassembly.com
• Triebel and Signh, "The 8088 and 8086 Microprocessors: Programming, Interfacing, Software, Hardware, and Applications", 4th Edition, Prentice Hall, 2003. ISBN 0130930814
• Jonathan Bartlett, "Programming from the Ground Up", Bartlett Publishing, July 31, 2004. ISBN 0975283847. Available online at http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/pgubook/
• Tambe, Pratik, "Primitiveasm: Learn Assembly Language in 15 days!!!", 1st online Edition at http://pratik.tambe.googlepages.com/
• Gerber, R. and Bik, A.J.C. and Smith, K. and Tian, X., "The Software Optimization Cookbook: High-Performance Recipes for IA-32 Platforms", 2nd edition, Intel Press, 2006. ISBN 9780976483212
• Blum, R., "Professional Assembly Language", 1st edition, Wiley, 2005. ISBN 9780764579011
• x86 Assembly Adventures video course by xorpd

Web Resources

• The Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manuals cover basic architecture, instruction set, system programming and other topics. They are available in downloadable PDF and can also be ordered on CD-ROM (order form) and as hard copy (order information).
• There are many online instruction set references. http://web.archive.org/20051121163920/home.comcast.net/~fbui/intel.html includes the number of clock cycles that each instruction takes, and http://siyobik.info/index.php?module=x86 gives a thorough summary of each command, including pseudocode describing the operation.
• AMD's AMD64 documentation on CD-ROM (U.S. and Canada only) and downloadable PDF format - maybe not independent but complete description of AMD64 through Assembly. http://developer.amd.com/documentation/guides/Pages/default.aspx#manuals
• Optimizing subroutines in assembly language: An optimization guide for x86 platforms
• The microarchitecture of Intel and AMD CPU’s: An optimization guide for assembly programmers and compiler makers
• Instruction tables: Lists of instruction latencies, throughputs and micro-operation breakdowns for Intel and AMD CPU's
• Calling conventions for different C++ compilers and operating systems
• "8086 Microprocessor Emulator" "emu8086 is the emulator ... with integrated 8086 assembler and tutorials for beginners. The emulator runs programs like the real microprocessor in step-by-step mode. It shows registers, memory, stack, variables and flags. All memory values can be investigated and edited by a double click."
• "Using the RDTSC Instruction for Performance Monitoring"
• "SIMPLY FPU"
• "Paul Hsieh's x86 Assembly Language Page"
• "The world's leading source for technical x86 processor information"
• "The Art of Picking Intel Registers"
• x86 Assembly Adventures Open source exercises

Other Assembly Languages

Assembly Languages
x86 Assembly	The Assembly Language used by 32-bit Intel Machines including the 386, 486, and Pentium Family.
MIPS Assembly	A Common RISC Assembly Language that is both powerful and relatively easy to learn.
68000 Assembly	The Assembly language used by the Motorola 68000 series of microprocessors.
PowerPC Assembly	The Assembly language used by the IBM PowerPC architecture.
SPARC Assembly	The Assembly language used by SPARC Systems and mainframes.
6502 Assembly	The 6502 is a popular 8-bit microcontroller that is cheap and easy to use.
TI 83 Plus Assembly	The instruction set used with the TI 83 Plus brand of programmable graphing calculators.
360 Assembly	The instruction set used with the IBM 360 / 370 / 93xx and z/System brand of Mainframe computers.

()

Licensing

X86 Assembly/Licensing

GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.3, 3 November 2008 Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <http://fsf.org/>

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

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This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.

We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.

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Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of this License can be used, that proxy's public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.

11. RELICENSING

"Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site" (or "MMC Site") means any World Wide Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of such a server. A "Massive Multiauthor Collaboration" (or "MMC") contained in the site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.

"CC-BY-SA" means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that license published by that same organization.

"Incorporate" means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part of another Document.

An MMC is "eligible for relicensing" if it is licensed under this License, and if all works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.

The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing.

How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:

Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document

under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3

or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;

with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.

A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU

Free Documentation License".

If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the "with...Texts." line with this:

with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the

Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST.

If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.

If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.