What is Assembly Language?

Each personal computer has a microprocessor that manages the computer's arithmetical, logical,
and control activities.

Each family of processors has its own set of instructions for handling various operations such as
getting input from keyboard, displaying information on screen and performing various other
jobs. These set of instructions are called 'machine language instructions'.

A processor understands only machine language instructions, which are strings of 1's and 0's.
However, machine language is too obscure and complex for using in software development. So,
the low-level assembly language is designed for a specific family of processors that represents
various instructions in symbolic code and a more understandable form.

Advantages of Assembly Language

Having an understanding of assembly language makes one aware of −

• How programs interface with OS, processor, and BIOS;

• How data is represented in memory and other external devices;
• How the processor accesses and executes instruction;
• How instructions access and process data;
• How a program accesses external devices.

Other advantages of using assembly language are −

• It requires less memory and execution time;

• It allows hardware-specific complex jobs in an easier way;
• It is suitable for time-critical jobs;
• It is most suitable for writing interrupt service routines and other memory resident
programs.

Basic Features of PC Hardware

The main internal hardware of a PC consists of processor, memory, and registers. Registers are
processor components that hold data and address. To execute a program, the system copies it
from the external device into the internal memory. The processor executes the program
instructions.

The fundamental unit of computer storage is a bit; it could be ON (1) or OFF (0) and a group of
8 related bits makes a byte on most of the modern computers.

So, the parity bit is used to make the number of bits in a byte odd. If the parity is even, the
system assumes that there had been a parity error (though rare), which might have been caused
due to hardware fault or electrical disturbance.
The processor supports the following data sizes −

• Word: a 2-byte data item

• Doubleword: a 4-byte (32 bit) data item
• Quadword: an 8-byte (64 bit) data item
• Paragraph: a 16-byte (128 bit) area
• Kilobyte: 1024 bytes
• Megabyte: 1,048,576 bytes

Binary Number System

Every number system uses positional notation, i.e., each position in which a digit is written has a
different positional value. Each position is power of the base, which is 2 for binary number
system, and these powers begin at 0 and increase by 1.

The following table shows the positional values for an 8-bit binary number, where all bits are set
ON.

Bit value 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Position value as a power of
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
base 2
Bit number 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

The value of a binary number is based on the presence of 1 bits and their positional value. So, the
value of a given binary number is −

1 + 2 + 4 + 8 +16 + 32 + 64 + 128 = 255

which is same as 28 - 1.

Hexadecimal Number System

Hexadecimal number system uses base 16. The digits in this system range from 0 to 15. By
convention, the letters A through F is used to represent the hexadecimal digits corresponding to
decimal values 10 through 15.

Hexadecimal numbers in computing is used for abbreviating lengthy binary representations.

Basically, hexadecimal number system represents a binary data by dividing each byte in half and
expressing the value of each half-byte. The following table provides the decimal, binary, and
hexadecimal equivalents −

Decimal number Binary representation Hexadecimal representation

0 0 0
1 1 1
 2 10 2
3 11 3
4 100 4
5 101 5
6 110 6
7 111 7
8 1000 8
9 1001 9
10 1010 A
11 1011 B
12 1100 C
13 1101 D
14 1110 E
15 1111 F

To convert a binary number to its hexadecimal equivalent, break it into groups of 4 consecutive
groups each, starting from the right, and write those groups over the corresponding digits of the
hexadecimal number.

Example − Binary number 1000 1100 1101 0001 is equivalent to hexadecimal - 8CD1

To convert a hexadecimal number to binary, just write each hexadecimal digit into its 4-digit
binary equivalent.

Example − Hexadecimal number FAD8 is equivalent to binary - 1111 1010 1101 1000

Binary Arithmetic
The following table illustrates four simple rules for binary addition −

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

1
0 1 1 1
+0 +0 +1 +1
=0 =1 =10 =11

Rules (iii) and (iv) show a carry of a 1-bit into the next left position.

Example

Decimal Binary
 60 00111100
+42 00101010
102 01100110

A negative binary value is expressed in two's complement notation. According to this rule, to
convert a binary number to its negative value is to reverse its bit values and add 1.

Example

Number 53 00110101
Reverse the bits 11001010
Add 1 00000001
Number -53 11001011

To subtract one value from another, convert the number being subtracted to two's complement
format and add the numbers.

Example

Subtract 42 from 53

Number 53 00110101
Number 42 00101010
Reverse the bits of 42 11010101
Add 1 00000001
Number -42 11010110
53 - 42 = 11 00001011

Overflow of the last 1 bit is lost.

Addressing Data in Memory

The process through which the processor controls the execution of instructions is referred as the
fetch-decode-execute cycle or the execution cycle. It consists of three continuous steps −

• Fetching the instruction from memory

• Decoding or identifying the instruction
• Executing the instruction

The processor may access one or more bytes of memory at a time. Let us consider a hexadecimal
number 0725H. This number will require two bytes of memory. The high-order byte or most
significant byte is 07 and the low-order byte is 25.
The processor stores data in reverse-byte sequence, i.e., a low-order byte is stored in a low
memory address and a high-order byte in high memory address. So, if the processor brings the
value 0725H from register to memory, it will transfer 25 first to the lower memory address and
07 to the next memory address.

x: memory address

When the processor gets the numeric data from memory to register, it again reverses the bytes.
There are two kinds of memory addresses −

• Absolute address - a direct reference of specific location.

• Segment address (or offset) - starting address of a memory segment with the offset value.

Assembly - Registers

Processor operations mostly involve processing data. This data can be stored in memory and
accessed from thereon. However, reading data from and storing data into memory slows down
the processor, as it involves complicated processes of sending the data request across the control
bus and into the memory storage unit and getting the data through the same channel.

To speed up the processor operations, the processor includes some internal memory storage
locations, called registers.

The registers store data elements for processing without having to access the memory. A limited
number of registers are built into the processor chip.

Processor Registers
There are ten 32-bit and six 16-bit processor registers in IA-32 architecture. The registers are
grouped into three categories −

• General registers,
• Control registers, and
• Segment registers.

The general registers are further divided into the following groups −
 • Data registers,
• Pointer registers, and
• Index registers.

Data Registers
Four 32-bit data registers are used for arithmetic, logical, and other operations. These 32-bit
registers can be used in three ways −

• As complete 32-bit data registers: EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX.

• Lower halves of the 32-bit registers can be used as four 16-bit data registers: AX, BX,
CX and DX.
• Lower and higher halves of the above-mentioned four 16-bit registers can be used as
eight 8-bit data registers: AH, AL, BH, BL, CH, CL, DH, and DL.

Some of these data registers have specific use in arithmetical operations.

AX is the primary accumulator; it is used in input/output and most arithmetic instructions. For
example, in multiplication operation, one operand is stored in EAX or AX or AL register
according to the size of the operand.

BX is known as the base register, as it could be used in indexed addressing.

CX is known as the count register, as the ECX, CX registers store the loop count in iterative
operations.

DX is known as the data register. It is also used in input/output operations. It is also used with
AX register along with DX for multiply and divide operations involving large values.

Pointer Registers
The pointer registers are 32-bit EIP, ESP, and EBP registers and corresponding 16-bit right
portions IP, SP, and BP. There are three categories of pointer registers −
 • Instruction Pointer (IP) − The 16-bit IP register stores the offset address of the next
instruction to be executed. IP in association with the CS register (as CS:IP) gives the
complete address of the current instruction in the code segment.
• Stack Pointer (SP) − The 16-bit SP register provides the offset value within the program
stack. SP in association with the SS register (SS:SP) refers to be current position of data
or address within the program stack.
• Base Pointer (BP) − The 16-bit BP register mainly helps in referencing the parameter
variables passed to a subroutine. The address in SS register is combined with the offset in
BP to get the location of the parameter. BP can also be combined with DI and SI as base
register for special addressing.

Index Registers
The 32-bit index registers, ESI and EDI, and their 16-bit rightmost portions. SI and DI, are used
for indexed addressing and sometimes used in addition and subtraction. There are two sets of
index pointers −

• Source Index (SI) − It is used as source index for string operations.

• Destination Index (DI) − It is used as destination index for string operations.

Control Registers
The 32-bit instruction pointer register and the 32-bit flags register combined are considered as
the control registers.

Many instructions involve comparisons and mathematical calculations and change the status of
the flags and some other conditional instructions test the value of these status flags to take the
control flow to other location.

The common flag bits are:

 • Overflow Flag (OF) − It indicates the overflow of a high-order bit (leftmost bit) of data
after a signed arithmetic operation.
• Direction Flag (DF) − It determines left or right direction for moving or comparing
string data. When the DF value is 0, the string operation takes left-to-right direction and
when the value is set to 1, the string operation takes right-to-left direction.
• Interrupt Flag (IF) − It determines whether the external interrupts like keyboard entry,
etc., are to be ignored or processed. It disables the external interrupt when the value is 0
and enables interrupts when set to 1.
• Trap Flag (TF) − It allows setting the operation of the processor in single-step mode.
The DEBUG program we used sets the trap flag, so we could step through the execution
one instruction at a time.
• Sign Flag (SF) − It shows the sign of the result of an arithmetic operation. This flag is set
according to the sign of a data item following the arithmetic operation. The sign is
indicated by the high-order of leftmost bit. A positive result clears the value of SF to 0
and negative result sets it to 1.
• Zero Flag (ZF) − It indicates the result of an arithmetic or comparison operation. A
nonzero result clears the zero flag to 0, and a zero result sets it to 1.
• Auxiliary Carry Flag (AF) − It contains the carry from bit 3 to bit 4 following an
arithmetic operation; used for specialized arithmetic. The AF is set when a 1-byte
arithmetic operation causes a carry from bit 3 into bit 4.
• Parity Flag (PF) − It indicates the total number of 1-bits in the result obtained from an
arithmetic operation. An even number of 1-bits clears the parity flag to 0 and an odd
number of 1-bits sets the parity flag to 1.
• Carry Flag (CF) − It contains the carry of 0 or 1 from a high-order bit (leftmost) after an
arithmetic operation. It also stores the contents of last bit of a shift or rotate operation.

The following table indicates the position of flag bits in the 16-bit Flags register:

Flag: O D I TSZ A P C

Bit no: 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Segment Registers
Segments are specific areas defined in a program for containing data, code and stack. There are
three main segments −

• Code Segment − It contains all the instructions to be executed. A 16-bit Code Segment
register or CS register stores the starting address of the code segment.
• Data Segment − It contains data, constants and work areas. A 16-bit Data Segment
register or DS register stores the starting address of the data segment.
• Stack Segment − It contains data and return addresses of procedures or subroutines. It is
implemented as a 'stack' data structure. The Stack Segment register or SS register stores
the starting address of the stack.
Apart from the DS, CS and SS registers, there are other extra segment registers - ES (extra
segment), FS and GS, which provide additional segments for storing data.

In assembly programming, a program needs to access the memory locations. All memory
locations within a segment are relative to the starting address of the segment. A segment begins
in an address evenly divisible by 16 or hexadecimal 10. So, the rightmost hex digit in all such
memory addresses is 0, which is not generally stored in the segment registers.

The segment registers stores the starting addresses of a segment. To get the exact location of data
or instruction within a segment, an offset value (or displacement) is required. To reference any
memory location in a segment, the processor combines the segment address in the segment
register with the offset value of the location.

Example
Look at the following simple program to understand the use of registers in assembly
programming. This program displays 9 stars on the screen along with a simple message −