Fundamental of Assembly Language

Programming (for Microprocessor)

Prima Dewi Purnamasari
Microprocessor
Electrical Engineering Department
Universitas Indonesia

Computer Language

High Level language

Low Level Language

Pascal, C, C++, Java, etc

Assembly

Machine Codes

010010001010100101010 in binary
1234 FFAB 1234 H in hexadecimal

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Why Assembly?
Assembly has several features that make it a good choice many
some situations.
1. It's fast Assembly programs are generally faster than
programs created in higher level languages. Often,
programmers write speed-essential functions in assembly.
2. It's powerful You are given unlimited power over your
assembly programs. Sometimes, higher level languages have
restrictions that make implementing certain things difficult.
3. It's small Assembly programs are often much smaller
than programs written in other languages. This can be very
useful if space is an issue.

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Preparation for Assembly Programming

Basically you will need:

Program editor as simple as Notepad

Assembler
1.
2.
3.

MASM http://www.masm32.com/.
TASM Made by Borland, a commercial product
NASM http://sourceforge.net/projects/nasm/

Be careful in writing your programs, because it runs directly

on your microprocessor!

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Steps to Create a
Program

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Creating an Assembly Language Program

An assembly language program should be written with any

text editor and have the extension filename.asm.
The assembler and Linker

The assembler program converts a symbolic source module

(file) into a hexadecimal object file
The linker program executes as the second part of ML, reads the
object files, created by the assembler program, and links them into
a single execution file (.EXE)

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MASM32

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TASM

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Emulator

an emulator is hardware and/or software that duplicates (or

emulates) the functions of a first computer system in a different
second computer system, so that the behavior of the second
system closely resembles the behavior of the first system.

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Emu8086

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Individual Assignment

Download and install

emu8086 (trial)

http://www.emu8086.com/

Find corresponding tutorial on how to use it (available on the

Internet!), self study!

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Group assignment

Each group is responsible to bring at minimum 1 laptop

(with emu8086 installed) to class every session

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Assembly Program Structure

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LIST File, generated

automatically after
program successfully
assembled

Memory
Address

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Machine
codes

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Writing Structure
NEXT:

MOV AX, [BX]

2

; comment

1=

label, followed by :
2= opcode
3= operand
4= comment, preceded with;
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Writing Structure

Each statement in an assembly language program consists

of four parts or fields.
The leftmost field is called the label.

All labels must begin with a letter or one of the following

special characters: @, $, -, or ?.

used to store a symbolic name for the memory location it

represents

a label may have any length from 1 to 35 characters

The label appears in a program to identify the name of a

memory location for storing data and for other
purposes.
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The next field to the right is the opcode field.

designed to hold the instruction, or opcode
the MOV part of the move data instruction is an example
of an opcode
Right of the opcode field is the operand field.
contains information used by the opcode
the MOV AL,BL instruction has the opcode MOV and
operands AL and BL
The comment field, the final field, contains a comment about
the instruction(s).
comments always begin with a semicolon (;)
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Try it in emulator!
Click View and look the changes in every menu list:

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registers
Data
Screen
Flags
etc

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Computer Data Formats

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Computer Data Formats

ASCII and Unicode Data

Binary Coded Decimal (BCD)
Byte-Sized Data
Word-Sized Data
Doubleword-Sized Data
Real Numbers

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ASCII Data

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American Standard Code for Information Interchange

(ASCII) data represent alphanumeric characters in the
memory of a computer system (Table 1.7)
The standard ASCII code is a 7-bit code with the eighth and
MSB used to hold parity in some systems
ASCII are most often stored in memory using a special
directive to the assembler program called define byte(s) or
DB

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BCD Data

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Binary-Coded Decimal (BCD) information is stored in

either packed or unpacked forms
Packed BCD data are stored as two digits per byte
Unpacked BCD data are stored as one digit per byte
The range of a BCD digit extends from 00002 to 10012 or
0-9 decimal
Table 1.9 shows some decimal numbers converted to both
packed ad unpacked BCD

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Byte-Sized Data

Byte-size data are stored as unsigned and signed integers

Negative signed numbers are stored in the 2s complement
form

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Whenever a number is 2s complement, its sign changes from

negative to positive or positive to negative
See example 1-22, 1-23

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Define byte (DB) directive is used to store 8-bit data

in memory

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Word-sized Data

A word (16-bits) is formed with two bytes of data

The LSB is always stored in the lowest-numbered memory
location, the MSB in the highest (i.e., little endian format)
used with Intel family of microprocessor
An alternate method (i.e., big endian format) is used with the
Motorola family of micro-processors

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Word-sized Data

Fig 1.11(a) & (b) shows the weight of each bit position in a
word of data

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Example 1.25 shows several signed and unsigned word-sized

data stored in memory using the assembler program
Note that define word(s) directive or DW causes the
assembler to store words in the memory

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Doubleword-sized Data

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Doubleword-sized data requires four bytes of memory

(32-bit number)
Doubleword-sized data appear as a product after a
multiplication and also as a dividend before a division
Fig. 1-12 shows the form used to store doublewords in the
memory and the binary weights of each bit position

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To define doubleword-sized data, use assembler

directive define doubleword or DD

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Real Numbers

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A real number (floating-point number) contains two parts:

a mantissa, significant, or fraction and an exponent
Fig. 1-13 and example 1-27 depicts both the 4-byte (single
precision) and 8-byte (double precision) forms of real
numbers

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The exponent is stored as a biased exponent

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an exponent of 23 is represented as a biased exponent of 127+3

or 130 (82H) in the single- precision form or as 1026 (402H) in the
double-precision form

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Reference/Text Book

The Intel Microprocessors, 8th Edition, Brey, Barry, B.,

Prentice Hall, USA, 2009

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