Savitribai Phule Pune University R. H.

Sapat College of
Engineering, Management Studies And Research, Nashik -
422005

Department Of Computer Engineering

Microprocessor PBL on Carry Flag Content Identification

5. PATIL HITESH DIPAK

Under the guidance of

Problem Statement

Objective:
To understand and identify the contents of Carry flag.

Prerequisite:
Knowledge of flags in microprocessor.
Theory:
EFLAGS:
A flag is a flip-flop that controls certain EU activities or signals a situation carried on by the
execution of an instruction. Thirteen flags are present in the EFLAG register. EFLAGS, a
32-bit register, operates as the flags register. FLAGS is the name given to the low-order 16
bits of EFLAGS and can be treated as a unit. This feature is useful for running 8086 and
80286 programs because this component of EFLAGS is similar to the FLAGS register of the
8086 and the 80286.
These flags can be categorized into three different groups.
1. Status flags: These flags reflect the state of a particular program.
2. Control flags: These flags directly affect the operation of a few instructions.
3. System flags: These flags reflect the current status of the machine and are usually
used by the operating systems than by application programs.

EFLAGS register

Status Flags:

The status flags are CF (Carry Flag) PF (Parity Flag ), AF (Auxiliary carry Flag) 2F (Zero
Flag). SF (Sign Flag), and OF (Overflow Flag). These flags indicate some conditions
produced by the execution of arithmetic or logical instructions. These flags provide necessary
information for arithmetic and logical control decisions.
1. CF (Carry flag): This bit is set by arithmetic instructions that generate either a
carry or a borrow. This bit can also be set, cleared, or inverted with the STC, CLC,
or CMC instructions, respectively Carry flag is also used in shift and rotate
instructions to contain the bit shifted or rotated out of the register.
2. PF (Parity flag): The parity bit is set by most instructions if the least significant
8-bit of the result contains an even number of one’s
3. AF (Auxiliary carry flag): This bit is set when there is a carry or borrow after a
nibble addition or subtraction, respectively. The programmer can’t access this bit
directly, but this bit is internally used for BCD arithmetic.
4. ZF (Zero flag): Zero flags is set to 1 if the result of an operation is zero
5. SF (Sign flag): The signed numbers are represented by a combination of sign and
magnitude The Most Significant Bit (MSB) indicates a sign of the number. For a
negative number, MSB is 1. The sign flag is set to 1 if the result of an operation is
negative (MSB=1).
6. OF (Overflow flag): In 2’s complemented arithmetic, the most significant bit is
used to represent a sign, and the remaining bits are used to represent the
 magnitude of a number. This flag is set if the result of a signed operation is too
large to fit in the number of bits available (7-bits for an 8-bit number) to represent
it.
For example, if you add the 8-bit signed number 01110110 (+118 decimal) and the
8-bit signed number 00110110 (+54 decimal). The result will be 10101100 (+172
decimal), which is the correct binary result. But in this case, it is too large to fit in
the 7-bits allowed for the magnitude in an 8-bit signed number. The overflow flag
will be set after this operation to indicate that the result of the addition has
overflowed into the sign bit.

Control Flags:

1. DF (Direction flag): The direction flag controls the direction of string operations.
When the D flag is cleared these operations process strings from low memory up
to high memory. This means that offset pointers (usually SI and DI) are
incremented by 1 after each operation in the string instructions when the D flag is
cleared. If the D flag is set, then SI and DI are decremented by 1 after each
operation to process strings from high to low memory

System Flags:

1. 1. VM (Virtual Memory) flag: This flag indicates the operating mode of 80386.
When the VM flag is set, 80386 switches from protected mode to virtual 8086
modes.
2. R (Resume) flag/Restart flag: This flag, when set allows selective masking of
some exceptions at the time of debugging
3. NT (Nested flag): This flag is set when one system task invokes another task
4. IOPL (VO Privilege level): The two bits in the IOPL are used by the processor
and the operating system to determine your application’s access to I/O facilities. It
holds a privilege level, from 0 to 3, at which the current code is running in order
to execute any I/O-related instruction.
5. IF (Interrupt Flag): When the interrupt flag is set, the 80386 recognizes and
handles external hardware interrupts on its INTR pin. If the interrupt flag is
cleared, 80386 ignores any inputs on this pin. The IF flag is set and cleared with
the STI and CLI instructions, respectively.
6. TF (Trap Flag): Trap flag allows users to single-step through programs. When an
80386 detects that this flag is set, it executes one instruction and then
automatically generates an internal exception 1. After servicing the exception, the
processor executes the next instruction and repeats the process. This single
stepping continues until the program code resets this flag for debugging programs’
single-step facility is used.
Solution:

Hence, correct option is (B) i.e number of 1 bits in A0.

Conclusion:
In this way we have successfully completed the study and implementation of carry flag.