Computer Architecture and Operating Systems CS 3230 :Assembly Section Lecture 3 Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Assembly files (.asm)  We will be using the nasm assembler  Program Components  Comments  Labels  Directives  Data  Main subroutine, which is a global one  Instructions: generally the format of an NASM instruction is as follows Label Instruction Operands ; Comment

Program Organization for CS3230  Generally, we will be using a C driver program called driver.c to run our assembler routines  Why driver.c ? 1. lets the C system set up the program to run correctly 2. All the segments and their corresponding segment registers will be initialized by C 3. The C library will also be available to be used by the assembly code

Program Organization : Skeleton file ; file: skel.asm ; This file is a skeleton that can be used to start assembly programs. %include "asm_io.inc" segment.data ; initialized data is put in the data segment here segment.bss ; uninitialized data is put in the bss segment segment.text global asm_main asm_main: enter 0,0 ; setup routine pusha ; code is put in the text segment. Do not modify the code before ; or after this comment. popa mov eax, 0 ; return back to C leave ret

Comments  Comments are denoted by semi-colons (;).  Everything from the semi-colon to the end of the line is ignored.

Labels  Labels identify  The start of subroutines or locations to jump to in your code  Variables are declared as labels pointing to specific memory locations  Labels are local to your file/module unless you direct otherwise  The colon identifies a label (an address!)  Example: NewLabel:  To define a label as global we say globalNewLabel

Directives  Direct the assembler to do something  Define constants  Define memory to store data into  Group memory into segments  Conditionally include source code  Include other files

Equ and % define directives  The equ directive  Used to define named constants used in your assembly program  Syntax: symbol equ value  Similar to C’s const directive :(const int symbol = value)  The %define directive  Similar to C’s #define directive ( #define name value)  Most commonly used to define constant macros: %define SIZE 100 moveax, SIZE  Macros can be redefined, and can be more complex than simple constants

Data directives  Used in data segments to define room for memory  There are two ways memory can be reserved  Defines room for data without initial value ( segment.bss) Using : RESX directive  Defines room for data with initial value (segment.data) Using : DX directive  Note: X is replaced with a letter that determines the size of the object as following

Example: Data Directives L1db0;byte labeled L1 w/ initial value 0 decimal L2dw1000;word labeled L2 w/ initial value 1000 decimal L3db110101b;byte labeled L3 w/ initial value binary( 53) L4db12h;byte labeled L4 w/ initial value 12 hex (18 decimal) L5 db17o;byte labeled L5 w/ initial value 17 octal (15 decimal) L6dd1A92h;doubleword labeled L6 initialized to hex 1A92 L7resb1;1 uninitialized byte L8db“A”;byte initialized to ASCII of A = 65 L9 resw 100 ; reserves room for 100 words  Note: Double quotes and single quotes are treated the same

More examples  Sequences of memory may also be defined. L10 db 0, 1, 2, 3 ; defines 4 bytes L11 db "w", "o", "r", ’d’, 0 ; defines a C string = "word" L12 db ’word’, 0 ; same as L11  For large sequences, NASM’s TIMES directive is often useful. L13 times 100 db 0 ; equivalent to 100 (db 0)’s

Debugging  There are four debugging routines named:  dump_regs: this macro prints out the values of the registers (in hexadecimal) Syntax : dump_regs X X: It takes a single integer argument that is printed out as well. This can be used to distinguish the output of different dump regs commands  dump_mem: this macro prints out the values of a region of memory (in hexadecimal) and also as ASCII characters Syntax: dump_mem X, label, Y X: This can be used to distinguish the output of different dump_mem commands Label: the starting address of displayed region Y: the number of 16-byte paragraphs to display after the starting address

Debugging (cont.)  There are four debugging routines named:  dump_stack: this macro prints out the values on the CPU stack Syntax: dump_stack X, Y, Z X: This can be used to distinguish the output of different dump_stack commands Y: the number of double words to display below the address that the EBP register holds Z: the number of double words to display above the address in EBP  dump_math: this macro prints out the values of the registers of the math coprocessor Syntax: dump_math X X: This can be used to distinguish the output of different dump_math commands

Assembling the code  Use PuTTy and WinSCP application to use nasm commands  To edit your assembly file nano myfile.asm (or vi or emacs or joe or WinSCP editor )  To assemble your program nasm –f elf myfile.asm  To create an executable program gcc –m32 myfile.o driver.c asm_io.o  From the above command, you will get a new prompt and a file a.out or a.exe will be created  To run the program, give the command./a.out or./a.exe