Written by the director of ARM’s worldwide academic program, this volume gives computer science professionals and students an edge, regardless of their preferred coding language. For those with some basic background in digital logic and high-level programming, the book examines code relevant to hardware and peripherals found on today's microcontrollers and looks at situations all programmers will eventually encounter.
The book’s carefully chosen examples teach easily transferrable skills that will help readers optimize routines and significantly streamline coding, especially in the embedded space.
This book is easily adaptable for classroom use. Instructors can access features that include a solutions manual, assembly language basics, problems, and actual code. The book also provides access to a fully functional evaluation version of the RealView Microcontroller Development Kit from Keil.
While it is still an important skill, getting good instruction in assembly language is not easy. The availability of languages such as C and Java foster the belief that engineers and programmers need only address problems at the highest levels of a program's operation. Yet, even modern coding methods, when done well, require an understanding of basic assembly methods such as those gained by learning ARM. Certain features that are the product of today’s hardware, such as coprocessors or saturated math operations, can be accessed only through the hardware’s native instructions. For that matter, any programmer wishing to achieve results as exact as his or her intentions needs to possess a mastery of machine code basics as taught in the pages of this book.
Of the 13 billion microprocessor-based chips shipped in the last year, nearly 3 billion were ARM-based, making operational knowledge of ARM an essential component of any programmer’s tool kit. That it can be applied with most any language makes it invaluable.
An Overview of Computing Systems
History of RISC
The Computing Device
Number Systems
Representations of Numbers and Characters
Translating Bits to Commands
The Tools
The ARM7 TDMI Programmer’s Model
Data Types
Processor Modes
Registers
Program Status Registers
The Vector Table
First Programs
Program 1: Shifting Data
Program 2: Factorial Calculation
Program 3: Swapping Register Contents
Programming Guidelines
Assembler Rules & Directives
Structure of Assembly Language Modules
Predefined Register Names
Frequently Used Directives
Macros
Miscellaneous Assembler Features
Loads, Stores and Addressing
Memory
Load and Stores—The Instructions
Operand Addressing
Endianness
Constants and Literal Pools
The ARM Rotation Scheme
Loading Constants into Registers
Loading Addresses into Registers
Logic and Arithmetic
Flags and Their Use
Comparison Instructions
Data Processing Instructions
Fractional Notation
Loops and Branches
Branching
Looping
More on Flags
Conditional Execution
Straight-Line Coding
Tables
Lookup Tables
Jump Tables
Binary Searches
Subroutines and Stacks
The Stack
Subroutines
Passing Parameters to Subroutines
The ARM APCS
Exception Handling
Interrupts
Error Conditions
Processor Exception Sequence
The Vector Table
Exception Handlers
Exception Priorities
Procedures for Handling Exceptions
Memory-Mapped Peripherals
The LPC2104
The LPC2132
THUMB
THUMB Instructions
Differences Between ARM and THUMB
THUMB Implementation and Use
How to Compile for THUMB
Mixing C and Assembly
Inline Assembler
Embedded Assembler
Calling Between C and Assembly
Appendix A: The ARM v4T Instruction Set
Appendix B: Running Keil Tools
Creating a Project and Selecting a Device
Creating Application Code
Building the Project and Running Code
Appendix C: ASCII character codes
