Assembly Language Programming ARM Cortex-M3

by Mahout, Vincent

• ISBN13: 9781848213296
• ISBN10: 1848213298
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-02-13
• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE

Summary

ARM designs the cores of microcontrollers which equip most "embedded systems" based on 32-bit processors. Cortex M3 is one of these designs, recently developed by ARM with microcontroller applications in mind. To conceive a particularly optimized piece of software (as is often the case in the world of embedded systems) it is often necessary to know how to program in an assembly language. This book explains the basics of programming in an assembly language, while being based on the architecture of Cortex M3 in detail and developing many examples. It is written for people who have never programmed in an assembly language and is thus didactic and progresses step by step by defining the concepts necessary to acquiring a good understanding of these techniques.

Author Biography

Vincent Mahout obtained a PhD at Toulouse University (INSA), France in 1992. He has taught automatic control and hardware computing in this establishment since 1990. His field of research is the robust control law for nonlinear systems.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Overview of Cortex-M3 Architecture	p. 1
Assembly language versus the assembler	p. 1
The world of ARM	p. 2
Cortex-M3	p. 3
The Cortex-M3 core in STM32	p. 7
The Core of Cortex-M3	p. 15
Modes, privileges and states	p. 15
Registers	p. 17
Registers R0 to R12	p. 19
The R13 register, also known as SP	p. 19
The R14 register, also known as LR	p. 20
The R15 or PC register	p. 21
The xPSR register	p. 22
The Proper Use of Assembly Directives	p. 25
The concept of the directive	p. 25
Typographic conventions and use of symbols	p. 26
Structure of a program	p. 27
The AREA sections	p. 28
A section of code	p. 29
Labels	p. 29
Mnemonic	p. 31
Operands	p. 32
Comments	p. 34
Procedure	p. 35
The data section	p. 36
Simple reservation	p. 36
Reservation with initialization	p. 37
Data initialization: the devil is in the details	p. 39
Is that all?	p. 39
Memory management directives	p. 40
Project management directives	p. 41
Various and varied directives	p. 44
Operands of Instructions	p. 47
The constant and renaming	p. 48
Operands for common instructions	p. 49
Use of registers	p. 49
The immediate operand	p. 53
Memory access operands: addressing modes	p. 57
The pointer concept	p. 58
Addressing modes	p. 59
Instruction Set	p. 63
Reading guide	p. 63
List of possible "condition" suffixes	p. 65
Arithmetic instructions	p. 66
Logical and bit manipulation instructions	p. 70
Internal transfer instructions	p. 75
Test instructions	p. 76
Branch instructions	p. 77
Load/store instructions	p. 80
Simple transfers	p. 80
Multiple transfers	p. 82
Access to the system stack	p. 84
"System" instructions and others	p. 85
Algorithmic and Data Structures	p. 87
Flowchart versus algorithm	p. 87
Alternative structures	p. 89
Simple (or shortened) alternative	p. 89
Complete alternative	p. 90
Special case of the alternative	p. 93
Multiple choice	p. 94
Iterative structures	p. 98
The Repeat...Until loop	p. 98
The While...Do loop	p. 102
The For ... loop	p. 105
Compound conditions	p. 106
Alternative with AND	p. 107
Iteration with AND	p. 108
Alternative with OR	p. 109
Iteration with OR	p. 110
Data structure	p. 111
Table in one dimension	p. 111
Tables in multiple dimensions	p. 112
Registration	p. 113
Non-dimensional table, character string	p. 113
Queue	p. 114
Stack	p. 115
Internal Modularity	p. 119
Detailing the concept of procedure	p. 119
Simple call	p. 119
Nested calls	p. 119
"Red wire" example	p. 121
Procedure arguments	p. 123
Usefulness of arguments	p. 123
Arguments by value and by reference	p. 123
Passing arguments by general registers	p. 123
Passing arguments by a stack	p. 126
Passing arguments by the system stack	p. 133
On the art of mixing	p. 136
Local data	p. 136
Simple reservation of local data	p. 137
Using a chained list	p. 143
Managing Exceptions	p. 147
What happends during Reset?	p. 148
Possible exceptions	p. 151
Traps	p. 153
Interrupts	p. 159
Priority management	p. 161
Priority levels and sublevels	p. 162
The nested mechanism	p. 166
Entry and return in exception processing	p. 167
Re-routing	p. 167
Return	p. 169
"Tail-chaining" and "Late-arriving"	p. 169
Other useful registers for the NVIC	p. 170
From Listing to Executable: External Modularity	p. 173
External modularity	p. 175
Generic example	p. 175
Assembly by pieces	p. 178
Advantages of assembly by pieces	p. 178
External symbols	p. 179
IMPORT and EXPORT directives	p. 181
The role of the assembler	p. 182
Files produced by the assembler	p. 183
Placement counters	p. 185
First pass: symbol table	p. 185
Second pass: translation	p. 186
Relocation table	p. 187
The role of the linker	p. 188
Functioning principle	p. 188
The products of the linker	p. 190
The loader and the debugging unit	p. 196
Appendices	p. 199
Instruction Set - Alphabetical List	p. 201
The SysTick Timer	p. 209
Example of a "Bootstrap" File	p. 217
The GNU Assembler	p. 227
Bibliography	p. 239
Index	p. 241
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.