Assembly Language Programming

Preface ix

Chapter 1. Overview of Cortex-M3 Architecture 1

1.1. Assembly language versus the assembler 1

1.2. The world of ARM 2

Chapter 2. The Core of Cortex-M3 15

2.1. Modes, privileges and states 15

2.2. Registers 17

Chapter 3. The Proper Use of Assembly Directives 25

3.1. The concept of the directive 25

3.2. Structure of a program 27

3.3. A section of code 29

3.4. The data section 36

3.5. Is that all? 39

Chapter 4. Operands of Instructions 47

4.1. The constant and renaming 48

4.2. Operands for common instructions 49

4.3. Memory access operands: addressing modes 57

Chapter 5. Instruction Set 63

5.1. Reading guide 63

5.2. Arithmetic instructions 66

5.3. Logical and bit manipulation instructions 70

5.4. Internal transfer instructions 75

5.5. Test instructions 76

5.6. Branch instructions 77

5.7. Load/store instructions 80

5.8. ?System? instructions and others 85

Chapter 6. Algorithmic and Data Structures 87

6.1. Flowchart versus algorithm 87

6.2. Alternative structures 89

6.3. Iterative structures 98

6.4. Compound conditions 106

6.5. Data structure 111

Chapter 7. Internal Modularity 119

7.1. Detailing the concept of procedure 119

7.2. Procedure arguments 123

7.3. Local data 136

Chapter 8. Managing Exceptions 147

8.1. What happens during Reset? 148

8.2. Possible exceptions 151

8.3. Priority management 161

8.4. Entry and return in exception processing 167

Chapter 9. From Listing to Executable: External Modularity 173

9.1. External modularity 175

9.2. The role of the assembler 182

9.3. The role of the linker 188

9.4. The loader and the debugging unit 196

Appendices 199

Appendix A. Instruction Set ? Alphabetical List 201

Appendix B. The SysTick Timer 209

Appendix C. Example of a ?Bootstrap? File 217

Appendix D. The GNU Assembler 227

Bibliography 239

Index 241