Microprocessor Theory and Applications with 68000/68020 and Pentium

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ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING WITH THE PENTIUM: PART 1

In this chapter we describe the fundamental concepts associated with assembly language programming with the Intel Pentium microprocessor. The first part of the Pentium's instruction set is introduced in this chapter. Topics include Pentium registers, addressing modes, and data transfer and arithmetic instructions. Several examples of assembly language programming using these instructions are provided.

Note that the Pentium contains 32 address pins and hence can directly address 2³² or 4 Gigabytes (GB) of memory. This large addressing space allows the Pentium to perform many operating system features, such as multitasking. The Pentium operates in two modes of operation: real mode and protected mode.

The real mode appears to programmers as a fast 8086 with a few new instructions. Like the 8086, the Pentium can directly address a maximum of one Megabyte (MB) of main memory. Since DOS is a real mode operating system, a Pentium-based PC that boots up into DOS operates in real mode. The real mode is the mode of operation of the Pentium upon hardware reset.

While in the real mode, the protected mode can be selected via execution of a single instruction. With a large directly addressable memory in protected mode, the Pentium provides support for multitasking, virtual memory addressing, memory management and protection, and control over instruction and data cache. Microsoft took advantage of these features and designed the Windows ...