The Art of Assembly Language

1.2 What This Volume Covers

In order to write great code, you need to know how to write efficient code, and to write efficient code, you must understand how computer systems execute programs and how abstractions found in programming languages map to the low-level hardware capabilities of the machine. This first volume teaches you the details of the underlying machine so you'll know how to write software that best uses the available hardware resources. While efficiency is not the only attribute great code possesses, inefficient code is never great. So if you're not writing efficient code, you're not writing great code.

In the past, learning great coding techniques has required learning assembly language. While this is not a bad approach, it is overkill. Learning assembly language involves learning two related subjects: (1) machine organization and (2) programming in assembly language. While learning assembly language programming helps, the real benefits of learning assembly language come from learning machine organization at the same time. Few books have taught machine organization without also teaching assembly language programming. To rectify this problem, this book teaches machine organization independently of assembly language so you can learn to write great code without the excessive overhead of learning assembly language.

'So what is machine organization?' you're probably wondering. Well, machine organization is a subset of computer architecture, and this book concentrates on those parts of computer architecture and machine organization that are visible to the programmer or are helpful for understanding why system architects chose a particular system design. The goal of learning machine organization is not to enable you to design your own CPU or computer system, but to teach you how to make the most efficient use of existing computer designs.

'Okay, so what is machine organization?' you're probably still asking. Well, a quick glance at the table of contents will give you an idea of what this subject is all about. Let's do a quick run-through of the book.

Chapters 2, 4, and 5 deal with basic computer data representation - how computers represent signed and unsigned integer values, characters , strings, character sets, real values, fractional values, and other numeric and nonnumeric quantities . If you do not have a solid understanding of how computers represent these various data types internally, it's difficult to understand why some operations that use these data types are so inefficient. And if you don't realize they're inefficient, you'll likely use them in an inappropriate fashion and the resulting code will not be great .

Chapter 3 discusses binary arithmetic and bit operations used by most modern computer systems. Because these operations are generally available in programming languages, Chapter 3 also offers several insights into how you can write better code by using arithmetic and logical operations in ways not normally taught in beginning programming courses. Learning standard 'tricks' such as these is part of how you become a great programmer.

Chapter 6 begins a discussion of one of the more important topics in this book: memory organization and access. Memory access is a common performance bottleneck in modern computer applications. Chapter 6 provides an introduction to memory, discussing how the computer accesses its memory, and describing the performance characteristics of memory. This chapter also describes various machine code addressing modes that CPUs use to access different types of data structures in memory. In modern applications, poor performance often occurs because the programmer does not understand the ramifications of memory access in their programs, and Chapter 6 addresses many of these ramifications .

Chapter 7 returns to the discussion of data types and representation by covering composite data types and memory objects. Unlike the earlier chapters, Chapter 7 discusses higher-level data types like pointers, arrays, records, structures, and unions. All too often programmers use large composite data structures without even considering the memory and performance issues of doing so. The low-level description of these high-level composite data types will make clear their inherent costs enabling you to use them in your programs sparingly and wisely.

Chapter 8 discusses Boolean logic and digital design. This chapter provides the mathematical and logical background you'll need to understand the design of CPUs and other computer system components . Although this particular chapter is more hardware oriented than the previous chapters, there are still some good ideas that you can incorporate into really great code . In particular, this chapter discusses how to optimize Boolean expressions, such as those found in common high-level programming language statements like if, while , and so on.

Continuing the hardware discussion begun in Chapter 8, Chapter 9 discusses CPU architecture. Although the goal of this book is not to teach you how to design your own CPU, a basic understanding of CPU design and operation is absolutely necessary if you want to write great code. By writing your code in a manner consistent with the way a CPU will execute that code, you'll get much better performance using fewer system resources. By writing your applications at odds with the way CPUs execute code, you'll wind up with slower, resource-hogging programs.

Chapter 10 discusses CPU instruction set architecture. Machine instructions are the primitive units of execution on any CPU, and the time spent during program execution is directly determined by the number and type of machine instructions the CPU executes. Understanding how computer architects design machine instructions can provide valuable insight into why certain operations take longer to execute than others. Once you understand the limitations of machine instructions and how the CPU interprets them, you can use this information to turn mediocre code sequences into great code sequences.

Chapter 11 returns to the subject of memory, covering memory architecture and organization. This chapter will probably be one of the most important to the individual wanting to write fast code. It describes the memory hierarchy and how to maximize the use of cache and other fast memory components. Great code avoids thrashing , a common source of performance problems in modern applications. By reading this chapter you will learn about thrashing and how to avoid low-performance memory access in your applications.

Chapter 12, 'Input and Output,' describes how computer systems communicate with the outside world. Many peripheral (input/output) devices operate at much lower speeds than the CPU and memory. You can write the fastest executing sequence of instructions possible, and still have your application run slowly because you don't understand the limitations of the I/O devices in your system. Chapter 12 presents a discussion of generic I/O ports, system buses, buffering, handshaking, polling, and interrupts. It also discusses how to effectively use many popular PC peripheral devices, including keyboards, parallel (printer) ports, serial ports, disk drives, tape drives , flash storage, SCSI, IDE/ATA, USB, and sound cards. Understanding the impact of these devices on your applications can help you write great , efficient code.