Microcontrollers

INSTRUCTION SYNTAX.
General syntax for 8051 assembly language is as follows.

LABEL: OPCODE OPERAND ;COMMENT

LABEL : (THIS IS NOT NECESSARY UNLESS THAT SPECIFIC LINE HAS TO BE ADDRESSED). The label is a symbolic
address for the instruction. When the program is assembled, the label will be given specific address
in which that instruction is stored. Unless that specific line of instruction is needed by a branching
instruction in the program, it is not necessary to label that line.

OPCODE: Opcode is the symbolic representation of the operation. The assembler converts the
opcode to a unique binary code (machine language).

OPERAND: While opcode specifies what operation to perform, operand specifies where to perform
that action. The operand field generally contains the source and destination of the data. In some
cases only source or destination will be available instead of both. The operand will be either
address of the data, or data itself.

COMMENT: Always comment will begin with ; or // symbol. To improve the program quality,
programmer may always use comments in the program.

ADDRESSING MODES
Various methods of accessing the data are called addressing modes.

8051 addressing modes are classified as follows.

1. Immediate addressing.
2. Register addressing.
3. Direct addressing.
4. Indirect addressing.
5. Relative addressing.
6. Absolute addressing.
7. Long addressing.
8. Indexed addressing.
9. Bit inherent addressing.
10. Bit direct addressing.

1. Immediate addressing.
In this addressing mode the data is provided as a part of instruction itself. In other words data
immediately follows the instruction.
Eg. MOV A, #30H
ADD A, #83 # Symbol indicates the data is immediate.
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2. Register addressing.
In this addressing mode the register will hold the data. One of the eight general registers (R0 to R7)
can be used and specified as the operand.
Eg. MOV A,R0
ADD A,R6
R0 – R7 will be selected from the current selection of register bank. The default register bank will be
bank 0.
3. Direct addressing
There are two ways to access the internal memory. Using direct address and indirect address. Using
direct addressing mode we can not only address the internal memory but SFRs also. In direct
addressing, an 8 bit internal data memory address is specified as part of the instruction and hence,
it can specify the address only in the range of 00H to FFH. In this addressing mode, data is obtained
directly from the memory.
Eg. MOV A,60h
ADD A,30h
4. Indirect addressing
The indirect addressing mode uses a register to hold the actual address that will be used in data
movement. Registers R0 and R1 and DPTR are the only registers that can be used as data pointers.
Indirect addressing cannot be used to refer to SFR registers. Both R0 and R1 can hold 8 bit address
and DPTR can hold 16 bit address.
Eg. MOV A,@R0
ADD A,@R1
MOVX A,@DPTR
5. Indexed addressing.
In indexed addressing, either the program counter (PC), or the data pointer (DTPR)—is used to
hold the base address, and the A is used to hold the offset address. Adding the value of the base
address to the value of the offset address forms the effective address. Indexed addressing is used
with JMP or MOVC instructions. Look up tables are easily implemented with the help of index
addressing.
Eg. MOVC A, @A+DPTR // copies the contents of memory location pointed by the sum of the
accumulator A and the DPTR into accumulator A.
MOVC A, @A+PC // copies the contents of memory location pointed by the sum of the
accumulator A and the program counter into accumulator A.
6. Relative Addressing.
Relative addressing is used only with conditional jump instructions. The relative address, (offset), is
an 8 bit signed number, which is automatically added to the PC to make the address of the next
instruction. The 8 bit signed offset value gives an address range of +127 to —128 locations. The
jump destination is usually specified using a label and the assembler calculates the jump offset
accordingly. The advantage of relative addressing is that the program code is easy to relocate and
the address is relative to position in the memory.
Eg. SJMP LOOP1
JC BACK
7. Absolute addressing
Absolute addressing is used only by the AJMP (Absolute Jump) and ACALL (Absolute Call)
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instructions. These are 2 byte instructions. The absolute addressing mode specifies the lowest 11
bit of the memory address as part of the instruction. The upper 5 bit of the destination address are
the upper 5 bit of the current program counter. Hence, absolute addressing allows branching only
within the current 2 Kbyte page of the program memory.
Eg. AJMP LOOP1
ACALL LOOP2

8. Long Addressing
The long addressing mode is used with the instructions LJMP and LCALL. These are 3 byte
instructions. The address specifies a full 16 bit destination address so that a jump or a call can be
made to a location within a 64 Kbyte code memory space.
Eg. LJMP FINISH
LCALL DELAY

9. Bit Inherent Addressing

10. Bit Direct Addressing