Ken Shirriff's blog: Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor Page 1 of 7

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Ken Shirriff's blog

Chargers, microprocessors, Arduino, and whatever

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Power supply posts
iPhone charger teardown Inside the ALU of the 8085
A dozen USB chargers
Magsafe hacking microprocessor
Inside a fake iPhone charger
Power supply history The arithmetic-logic unit is a fundamental part of any computer,
performing addition, subtraction, and logic operations, but how it
Quick links works is a mystery to many people. I've reverse-engineered the ALU
circuit from the 8085 microprocessor and explain how it works. The
Arduino IR library 8085's ALU is a surprisingly complex circuit that at first looks like a
6502 reverse-engineering
mysterious jumble of gates, but it can be understood if you don't
mind diving into some Boolean logic.

The following diagram shows the location of the ALU in the 8085.
Labels The ALU is 8 bits wide, with the high-order bit on the left. The
register file is the large block below the ALU. The registers are 16
6502 8085 apple arc arduino bits wide, made up of pairs of 8-bit registers. Surprisingly, the
c# calculator css electronics f# register file has the high-order bit on the right, the opposite order
fractals genome haskell html5 ipv6 ir from the ALU.
java javascript math oscilloscope
photo power supply random
sheevaplug snark spanish theory Z-
80

The ALU takes two 8-bit inputs, which I'll call A and X, and performs
one of five basic operations: ADD, OR, XOR, AND, and SHIFT-RIGHT.
As well, if the input X is inverted, the ALU can perform subtraction
and complement operations. You might think SHIFT-LEFT is missing
from this list. However, it is simply performed by adding the
number to itself, which shifts it to the left one bit in binary. Note
that the 8085 arithmetic operations are very basic. There is no
multiplication or division operation - these were added in the 8086.

http://www.righto.com/2013/01/inside-alu-of-8085-microprocessor.html 04-09-2013
Ken Shirriff's blog: Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor Page 2 of 7

The ALU consists of 8 mostly-identical slices, one for each bit. For
addition, each slice of the ALU adds the appropriate input bits,
The webpage cannot be found
computing the sum A + X + carry-in, generating a sum bit and a
carry-out bit. That is, each bit of the ALU implements a full adder.
The logic operations simply operate on the two input bits: A AND X,
Most likely causes: A OR X, A XOR X. Shift-right simply outputs the A bit from the slice
to the right.
• There might be a typing
• If you clicked on
ALU schematic
The following schematic shows one bit of the ALU. The schematic
What you can has roughly the same layout as the implementation on the chip,
flowing from bottom to top. Eight of these circuits are stacked side-
by-side, with the low-order bit on the right. Carries flow from right
Retype the address.
to left, and bits shifted right flow from left to right.

Go back to the previous

Go to  and look for the information you

More information

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supplies; new transistors did Starting at the bottom of the schematic, is the complex gate
An Arduino universal remote: labeled Negation. This gate optionally selects a negated second
record and playback IR signals argument by selecting either XN or /XN. (XN is the Nth bit of the

http://www.righto.com/2013/01/inside-alu-of-8085-microprocessor.html 04-09-2013
Ken Shirriff's blog: Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor Page 3 of 7

Inside the ALU of the 8085 second argument, which I'll call X. The / indicates the
microprocessor complement.) For most of the discussion below I'll assume XN is
uncomplemented to keep things simpler.

Operation
Above the complement selector are a few gates labeled Operation
Kids Who Carry Our that perform the desired 2-input operation. The NAND gate on the
Pain left generates either A NAND X or 1 based on the select_op1 control
Robert Hemfelt,
line. The OR gate on the right generates either A OR X or 1, based
Pa...
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yields four different possibilities:

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1 0 A NXOR X
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produced by this circuit. This will be fixed in the next step.

Irwin Industrial Combine with carry

Tools 341008
Speebo... Above the operation circuit is the next block of gates labeled
IRWIN Combine with carry that generates the ALU output by merging the
New $22.28 carry-in with the operation value via XOR.
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To understand this circuit, first consider the following simple XOR

SanDisk
microSDHC 32GB
circuit, which is used a couple times in the ALU. It can be
Flash Memory ... understood fairly simply: if both inputs are 0 (top) or both inputs
SanDisk are 1 (bottom) then the output is 0.
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Privacy Information
Ignoring the shift_right circuit for a moment, the block of gates is
simply the XOR circuit above. Note that XOR with 0 is a no-op,
while XOR with 1 complements the value. And A XOR X XOR CARRY
Blog Archive is the low-order bit of adding A, X, and CARRY.

▼ 2013 (21) The key point of this circuit is that the incoming carry is generated
► September(3) with the proper value to convert the operation output into the
► August(4) desired final result. The incoming carry /carry(N-1) is either 0, 1, or
► July(4) the complemented carry from bit N-1 as appropriate.
► June(2)
► April(1) Op Operation output Carry Result
► March(2)
► February(2)
or A NOR X 1 A OR X
▼ January(3) add A NXOR X /carry A XOR X XOR CARRY
Inside the ALU of the 8085
microprocessor xor A NXOR X 1 A XOR X
Notes on the PLA on the 8085
chip and A AND X 0 A AND X
The 6502 CPU's overflow flag
explained at the sili... shift right 0 0 A(N+1)
► 2012 (10)
complement A NOR /X 1 A OR /X

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Ken Shirriff's blog: Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor Page 4 of 7

► 2011 (11) subtract A NXOR /X /carry A XOR /X XOR

► 2010 (22) CARRY
► 2009 (22)
► 2008 (27) Note that the carry-in line must have the right value in order to
generate the appropriate output. For addition it passes the inverted
carry from one bit to the next. But for OR, XOR, the line is set to 1.
And for AND and SHIFT_RIGHT it is set to 0. As will be seen below,
the carry circuitry generates the right value for the right operation.

The final aspect of this circuit is the shift-right circuit. With a 0 op

input, 0 carry input, and shift_right set, the output is simply the bit
from the right: A(N+1).

Generate carry
The circuit on the left, labeled Generate carry generates the carry
out. It can generate three different outputs: 1, 0, or the
(complemented) carry from the sum. If select_op2 is set, it will
force the carry to 0. Otherwise if force_ncarry_1 is set, it will force
the carry to 1. Otherwise, the carry is generated for the sum of A +
X + carry-in through straightforward logic: If the carry-in is set, and
one of the inputs is set, there will be a carry out. If both input bits
are set, there will be a carry out.

Flags
The 8085 has a parity flag, which is 1 if the number of 1 bits is
even, and 0 if the number of parity bits is odd. The parity flag is
generated by XORing all the result bits together (and
complementing). Each bit is XORed with the lower-order parity
value by the parity circuit near the top of the schematic. The XOR
circuit is the same circuit described above.

The zero flag is computed by a simple circuit: each result bit drives
a transistor that will pull the zero line low if the bit is set. This
forms an 8-input NOR gate, spread across the ALU.

The control lines

As seen in the schematic, the 8085 uses multiple control lines to
control the activity inside the ALU. In total, the ALU provides 7
different operations and the following table summarizes the control
lines that are used for each operation. It also lists the opcodes that
use each ALU operation.

Operation select_neg select_op1 select_op2 shift_right

or 0 0 0 0

add 0 1 0 0

xor 0 1 0 0

and 0 1 1 0
shift right 0 0 1 1

complement 1 0 0 0
subtract 1 1 0 0

The ALU control lines are generated from the opcode by the
programmable logic array. Specifically, they are outputs from PLA
F, which is to the right of the ALU. More details are inmy article on

http://www.righto.com/2013/01/inside-alu-of-8085-microprocessor.html 04-09-2013
Ken Shirriff's blog: Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor Page 5 of 7

the PLA. The ALU has additional control lines to set up the
registers, initialize the carry bits, and set the flags. These control
the differences between different op codes, beyond the categories
above. the I will explain those in a future article.

Reverse-engineering the ALU

This information is based on the 8085 reverse-engineering done by
the visual 6502 team. This team dissolves chips in acid to remove
the packaging and then takes many close-up photographs of the die
inside.Pavel Zima converted these photographs into mask layer
images, generated a transistor net from the layers, and wrote a
transistor-level 8085 simulator.

I took the transistor net and used it to figure out how the ALU
works. First, I converted the transistor net into gates. Next I figured
out which gates are part of the ALU and put them into a schematic.
Then I examined how the circuit worked for different operations
and eventually figured out how it works.

Conclusion
The ALU of the 8085 is an interesting circuit. At first it seemed like
an incomprehensible pile of gates with mysterious control lines, but
after some investigation I figured it out. The 8085 ALU is
implemented very differently from the 6502's ALU (which I'll write
up later). The 6502's ALU uses fairly straightforward circuits to
generate the SUM, AND, XOR, OR, and SHIFT values in parallel, and
then uses a simple pass-transistor multiplexor to pick the desired
operation. This is in contrast to the 8085 ALU, which generates only
the desired value.

Posted byKen Shirriffat11:07 PM

Labels:6502,8085

8 comments:

Edsaid...

Excellent post! I've reposted it to Retro Communities

at
https://plus.google.com/communities/1090524130184
37647853

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Ken Shirriff's blog: Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor Page 6 of 7

January 25, 2013 at 12:40 AM

Anonymous said...

Okay, now i understand the reason why the 6502 has

illegal opcodes that combine 2 alu commands with
each other....

January 26, 2013 at 3:49 AM

en hirri said...

Anonymous: if you want to know the details of 6502

illegal opcodes, the page to read is pagetable.com.

January 26, 2013 at 6:10 PM

Anonymous said...

It is interesting, how value for /XN input is generated.

Is there one more adder for that?

April 27, 2013 at 8:50 AM

en hirri said...

Anonymous: I should have given XN and /XN the names

TMPN and /TMPN: they come from the TMP register,
which holds one of the arguments for the ALU. Since
each latch in TMP is a pair of inverters, the
complemented bit is available "for free".

May 1, 2013 at 11:07 PM

Anonymous said...

Ken this is great information. Have a question from my

students, why during AND operation AC is set? Could
not get a very good answer, can you help please?
Thanks a lot. from Prad

May 2, 2013 at 8:40 AM

en hirri said...

Hi Prad. That's a great question, which AC gets set

during an AND operation.

There are two factors. First, the Sign, Zero, Auxiliary

Carry, and Parity flags are all loaded by the same
control line, for arithmetic instructions. Thus, the AC
flag gets set to something for AND instructions, even
though it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Second, the ALU circuit happens to output 0 on the

internal inverted-carry line for an AND instruction.
(See the table under "Combine with Carry" above.) This
0 is just the value the ALU circuit generates for AND.
For OR, it happens to generate 1. Remember that
these are inverted values.

http://www.righto.com/2013/01/inside-alu-of-8085-microprocessor.html 04-09-2013
Ken Shirriff's blog: Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor Page 7 of 7

Putting these two factors together, the AC flag is set

for AND operations and cleared for OR operations. This
doesn't really make mathematical sense; it's just a
consequence of how the circuit is implemented.

I'm planning to write another blog post about the ALU

and flags, so I'm interested in the questions people
have.

May 2, 2013 at 9:21 PM

Anonymous said...

Ken Thanks a lot for the answer given. I will check for
other instructions also which have flags reset or set
but not in a very logical way. In the mean time thanks
again and information you have put here is very nice
indeed. From Prad

May 4, 2013 at 2:23 PM

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