Computers as Components, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER

2

Instruction Sets

■ A brief review of computer architecture taxonomy and

assembly language.

■ Two very different architectures: ARM and TI C55x.

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, we begin our study of microprocessors by studying instruction

sets—the programmer’s interface to the hardware.Although we hope to do as much

programming as possible in high-level languages, the instruction set is the key to

analyzing the performance of programs. By understanding the types of instructions

that the CPU provides,we gain insight into alternative ways to implement a particular

function.

We use two CPUs as examples.The ARM processor [Fur96, Jag95] is widely used ...