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 MIPSpro Assembly Language Programmer's Guide
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Chapter 2. Addressing
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Chapter 2. Addressing

This chapter describes the formats that you can use to specify addresses. SGI CPUs use a byte addressing scheme. Access to halfwords requires alignment on even byte boundaries, and access to words requires alignment on byte boundaries that are divisible by four. Access to doublewords (for 64-bit systems) requires alignment on byte boundaries that are divisible by eight. Any attempt to address a data item that does not have the proper alignment causes an alignment exception.

Instructions to Load and Store Unaligned Data

The unaligned assembler load and store instructions may generate multiple machine language instructions. They do not raise alignment exceptions.

These instructions load and store unaligned data:

  • Load doubleword left (LDL)

  • Load word left (LWL)

  • Load doubleword right (LDR)

  • Load word right (LWR)

  • Store doubleword left (SDL)

  • Store word left (SWL)

  • Store doubleword right (SDR)

  • Store word right (SWR)

  • Unaligned load doubleword (ULD)

  • Unaligned load word (ULW)

  • Unaligned load halfword (ULH)

  • Unaligned load halfword unsigned (ULHU)

  • Unaligned store doubleword (USD)

  • Unaligned store word (USW)

  • Unaligned store halfword (USH)

The following instructions load and store aligned data:

  • Load doubleword (LD)

  • Load word (LW)

  • Load halfword (LH)

  • Load halfword unsigned (LHU)

  • Load byte (LB)

  • Load byte unsigned (LBU)

  • Store doubleword (SD)

  • Store word (SW)

  • Store halfword (SH)

  • Store byte (SB)

Address Formats

The assembler accepts the following formats for addresses: Table 2-2 explains these formats in more detail.

Table 2-1. Address Formats

Format

Address

(base-register)

Base address (zero offset assumed)

expression

Absolute address

expression (base-register )

Based address

index-register (base-register )

Based address

relocatable-symbol

Relocatable address

relocatable-symbol ± expression

Relocatable address

relocatable-symbol ± expression (index register)

Indexed relocatable address


Address Descriptions

The assembler accepts any combination of the constants and operations described in this chapter for expressions in address descriptions.

Table 2-2. Assembler Addresses

Expression

Address Description

( base-register)

Specifies an indexed address, which assumes a zero offset. The base-register contents specify the address.

expression

Specifies an absolute address. The assembler generates the most locally efficient code for referencing a value at the specified address.

expression (base-register )

Specifies a based address. To get the address, the CPU adds the value of the expression to the contents of the base-register.

index-register (base-register)

Same as expression(base-register ), except that the index register is used as the offset.

relocatable-symbol

Specifies a relocatable address. The assembler generates the necessary instruction(s) to address the item and generates relocatable information for the link editor.

relocatable-symbol ± expression

Specifies a relocatable address. To get the address, the assembler adds or subtracts the value of the expression, which has an absolute value, from the relocatable symbol. The assembler generates the necessary instruction(s) to address the item and generates relocatable information for the link editor. If the symbol name does not appear as a label anywhere in the assembly, the assembler assumes that the symbol is external.

relocatable-symbol ( index register)

Specifies an indexed relocatable address. To get the address, the CPU adds the index registerto the relocatable symbol's address. The assembler generates the necessary instruction(s) to address the item and generates relocatable information for the link editor. If the symbol name does not appear as a label anywhere in the assembly, the assembler assumes that the symbol is external.

relocatable ± expression

Specifies an indexed relocatable address. To get the address, the assembler adds or subtracts the relocatable symbol, the expression, and the contents of the index register. The assembler generates the necessary instruction(s) to address the item and generates relocation information for the link editor. If the symbol does not appear as a label anywhere in the assembly, the assembler assumes that the symbol is external.


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Chapter 1. Registers  Chapter 3. Exceptions 

MIPSpro Assembly Language Programmer's Guide
(document number: 007-2418-006 / published: 2003-08-15)    table of contents  |  additional info  |  download

    Front Matter
    New Features in This Manual
    About This Guide
    Chapter 1. Registers
    Chapter 2. Addressing
    Chapter 3. Exceptions
    Chapter 4. Lexical Conventions
    Chapter 5. The Instruction Set
    Chapter 6. Coprocessor Instruction Set
    Chapter 7. Writing Assembly Language Code
    Chapter 8. Pseudo Op-Codes (Directives)
    Index


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