Only four of the bits in the status register are available to user-mode:
Bit | Meaning | Notes |
---|---|---|
M | Modulus | Used by division instructions |
Q | Quotient | Used by division instructions |
S | Saturate | Used by multiply-add instructions |
T | Test | Multi-purpose flag |
(There was no official meaning for the names of the registers, so I made up mnemonics for them.)
Aside from the flags used by special-purpose instructions (multiplication and division), there is basically only one flag: T. Each instructions decides how it wishes to consume and produce the T flag.
CLRT ; T = 0 SETT ; T = 1 CLRS ; S = 0 SETS ; S = 1
There are four instructions which directly set or clear two of the bits in the status register. We’ll learn more about the M and Q registers when we study integer division.
MOVT Rn ; Rn = T (0 or 1)
There is also a special instruction to copy the T flag into a register. There is no converse instruction, but we’ll see later how we could try to synthesize one.
Windows CE requires that the S flag be clear at function entry and exit.
Since there wasn’t much to be said about flags, I’ll use the rest of my time to cover various miscellaneous instructions.
MOVA @(disp, PC), r0 ; r0 = PC + disp
The move address instruction calculates the effective address of @(disp, PC)
and stores it into r0. The displacement can be a multiple of 4 up to 255 × 4 = 1020.
SWAP.B Rm, Rn ; Rn = Rm with bottom two bytes swapped SWAP.W Rm, Rn ; Rn = Rm with top and bottom words swapped XTRCT Rm, Rn ; Rn = (Rn << 16) | (Rm >> 16)
These instructions are for byte swapping or extracting the middle 32 bits of a 64-bit value.
PREF @Rn ; prefetch memory at Rn
The prefetch instruction has no effect if the memory at Rn is inaccessible.
TRAPA #imm ; trap to kernel mode
The TRAPA
instruction traps to kernel mode. It carries an 8-bit unsigned immediate payload which kernel mode can use to signify anything it wishes.
NOP ; do nothing
Fortunately, the instruction 0000
is invalid, rather than being a nop.
STC GBR, Rn ; Rn = GBR LDC Rn, GBR ; GBR = Rn STC PR, Rn ; Rn = PR LDC Rn, PR ; PR = Rn
These instructions let you move data into and out of the special registers gbr and pr. We saw gbr when we learned about addressing modes. We’ll learn about pr when we get to control transfer.
Well, that wasn’t very exciting yet. Let’s start doing math. Next time.
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