Assignment-1 Software Technology

Guided By– Asst. Prof Sanchita Mam Submitted By- Swarnim Shukla( 8th Sem)

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.

Register Types :
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 −

1. Data registers,
2. Pointer registers, and
3. 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 −

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  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.

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

Flag: O D I T S Z A P C

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

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.

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