MODULE 4 : ARM

PROGRAMMING
 Contents
2
 Architectural Support for High-Level Languages
 Abstraction in software design
 Data Types & Floating Point Data Types
 ARM Floating Point architecture
 Expressions, Conditional Statements, Loops , Functions & Procedures
 Use of memory & Run-Time Environment.
 Thumb Instruction Set
 Thumb bit and Thumb Programmer’s model
 Thumb Instructions
 Thumb Implementation
 Thumb Applications
 Architectural Support for System Development
 ARM Memory Interface

 Architectural Support for High-Level Languages
Abstraction in Software Design
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 Assembly- level
 Instructions, addresses,registers,bytes and words
 High-Level Languages
 Compiler
 Data Types (Self – Study)
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 Decimal, BCD, Hexadecimal, Signed Integers, Real

Numbers, ASCII
 ANSI C Basic datatypes- Signed and unsigned charcters,
short integers, integers,long integers, floating
point,double and long double, enumerated type and bit
fields
 ANSI C Derived datatypes- Arrays, functions,structures,
pointers, unions
 Data Types - ARM
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 Characters – unsigned byte load and store instructions.

 ARM pointers are 32 bits long
 ARM C Compiler aligns charcters on byte boundaries , short
integers at even addresses and all other types on word boundaries
 Structure starts on word boundary and are closely packed with
alignment rules.
 ARM integer core provides native support for signed and
unsigned 32-bit integers and for unsigned bytes, covering the C
integer long integer and unsigned character types
 Floating-point data types (Self-Study)
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 IEEE 754 – single precision, double precision, double extended precision,

packed decimal floating-point number and extended packed decimal
floating-point.
 ARM Limited has defined a set of floating point instructions within the
coprocessor instruction space.
 These instructions are normally implemented entirely in software through
the undefined instruction trap (which collects any coprocessor
instructions that are not accepted by a hardware coprocessor), but a subset
may be handled in hardware by the FPA10 floating-point coprocessor.
 ARM Limited also supplies a C floating-point library which supports
IEEE single and double precision formats
 ARM Floating-Point Architecture
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 FPA10 floating-point accelerator

 An interpretation of the coprocessor instruction set when the coprocessor
number is 1 or 2. (The floating-point system uses two logical coprocessor
numbers.)
 Eight 80-bit floating-point registers in coprocessors 1 and 2 (the same
physical registers appear in both logical coprocessors).
 A user-visible floating-point status register (FPSR) which controls various
operating options and indicates error conditions.
 Optionally, a floating-point control register (FPCR) which is user-
invisible and should be used only by the support software specific to the
hardware accelerator.
 Floating Point Instructions
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P – pre-/post-index (to compute address)

U – up/down (add (1) or subtract(0) offset)
W- write-back (auto – index)
L – load/store (1/0)
Load and store floating binary encoding. Rn- base register
FRd- the first register to be transferred

Load and store multiple floating binary encoding.

 Floating Point Instructions
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Floating-point data processing binary encoding.

Floating-point register transfer binary encoding.

 FPA10 organization
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The FPA10 arithmetic unit operates in four pipeline

stages:
1. Prepare: align operands.
2. Calculate: add, multiply or divide.
3. Align: normalize the result.
4. Round: apply appropriate rounding to the result.
11

 Its external interface is to the ARM data bus and the coprocessor
handshake signals
 The major components are:
 • The coprocessor pipeline follower

 • The load/store unit that carries out format conversion on floating-

point data types as they are loaded from and stored to memory.
 • The register bank which stores eight 80-bit extended precision

floating-point operands.
 • The arithmetic unit which incorporates an adder, a multiplier and a

divider, together with rounding and normalizing hardware.

 Expressions- Basics
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 ARM integer data processing instructions implement most

of the C integer arithmetic, bit-wise and shift primitives
directly.
 The 3-address instruction format used by the ARM gives
the compiler the maximum flexibility in how it preserves
or re-uses registers during expression evaluation.
 Thumb instructions are generally 2-address, which restricts
the compiler's freedom to some extent, and the smaller
number of general registers also makes its job harder
 Expressions-Accessing operands
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 A procedure will normally work with operands that are

presented in one of the following ways, and can be
accessed as indicated
 As an argument passed through a register.
 As an argument passed on the stack.
 As a constant in the procedure's literal pool.
 As a local variable.
 As a global variable.
 Expressions - Pointers
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 int *p; p = p+1; will increase the value of p by 4 bytes

 int i = 4 ;p = p + i;

- If p is held in r0 and i in r1, the change to p may be

compiled as:
 ADD r0, r0, r1, LSL #2 ; scale r1 to int
 Conditional Statements -if...else
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 if (a>b) c=a; else c=b;

 CMP r0, r1
 MOVGT r2, r0
 MOVLE r2, rl
 Conditional Statements -Switch
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 Loops- for(el;e2;e3){..}
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 for (i=0; i<10; i++) {a[i] = 0}

 Loops- while (el) {..}
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 Loops- do {..} while (el)
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 LOOP . . ; loop body

 ; evaluate expression
 BNE LOOP
 EXIT
 Functions and procedures
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 Use of Memory
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 An ARM system, like most computer systems, has its

memory arranged as a linear set of logical addresses.
 A C program expects to have access to a fixed area of
program memory (where the application image resides)
and to memory to support two data areas that grow
dynamically and where the compiler often cannot work
out a maximum size.
 The stack
 The heap.
The standard ARM C program address space model.
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 Stack Behaviour
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 Run-time environment
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 A C program requires an environment in which to operate;

this is usually provided through a library of functions that
the C program can call.
 Division and remainder functions.
 Stack-limit checking functions.
 Stack and heap management
 Program start up.
 Program termination.
 Thumb Instruction Set - Basics
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 The Thumb instruction set addresses the issue of code density.

 It may be viewed as a compressed form of a subset of the ARM
instruction set.
 Thumb instructions map onto ARM instructions, and the Thumb
programmer's model maps onto the ARM programmer's model.
 Implementations of Thumb use dynamic decompression in an
ARM instruction pipeline and then instructions execute as
standard ARM instructions within the processor.
 Thumb Instruction Set - Basics
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 Bit 5 of CPSR – T bit if set thumb mode

 Not all ARM processors are capable of executing Thumb
instructions; those that are have a T in their name, such as the
ARM7TDMI.
 Thumb Entry
 Branch and Exchange instruction (BX). - sets the T bit, Change PC,
Flush instruction pipeline
 Exception returns (special form of data processing instruction or a
special form of load multiple register instruction)
 Thumb Instruction Set - Basics
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 Thumb Exit
 Explicit – BX instruction
 Implicit- Exception Entry (Exceptions are handled in ARM mode
only)
 Thumb System
 Thumb systems include some ARM code, if only to handle
initialization and exception entry.
 A typical embedded system will include a small amount of fast 32-bit
memory on the same chip as the ARM core and bulk of the code will
not be speed critical and may execute from a 16-bit off-chip ROM.
 The Thumb programmer's model
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 Thumb-ARM similarities
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 The load-store architecture with data processing, data

transfer and control flow instructions.
 Support for 8-bit byte, 16-bit half-word and 32-bit word
data types where half-words are aligned on 2-byte
boundaries and words are aligned on 4-byte boundaries.
 A 32-bit unsegmented memory.
 Thumb-ARM differences
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 Most Thumb instructions are executed unconditionally.

 Many Thumb data processing instructions use a 2-address
format
 the destination register is the same as one of the source registers
 ARM data processing instructions, with the exception of the 64-
bit multiplies, use a 3-address format.
 Thumb instruction formats are less regular than ARM
instruction formats, as a result of the dense encoding.