ASSEMBLERS

Prepared By:
Shifali Sharma
Apex Institute of Technology- MBA
Apex Institute of Technology- CSE
 Definition
• An assembler is a translator that translates source
instructions (in symbolic language) into target
instructions (in machine language), on a one to one
basis.
• An assembler is a translator that translates a
machine oriented language into machine language.

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 Assembly Language

[label] mnemonic [operand] [;]

• label : Symbolic name for memory location
• mnemonic : operation to be performed
• operands : values or variables on which
operation is to be performed
• after ; : comment

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 Assembly Language Terms
• LC (Location Counter) : LC contains the address of next
instruction to be executed.
• Literals : the constant values present in the assemble
code.
ADD R1, 4
Here 4 is a literal.
• Symbols : the variable names we use to hold some
value.
A DC ‘1’
Here A is a symbol.
• Procedures : these are the functions in assembly
language.

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 Assembly Language Statements

• Imperative Statements
– An Imperative statement indicates an action to be
performed during the execution of assembled
program.
– MOVER AREG A
– PRINT B

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 Assembly Language Statements

• Declarative Statements
– DS : reserves areas of memory and associates
name with them
– DC : constructs memory word containing
constants
– A DS 5
– B DC 3

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 Assembly Language Statements

• Assembler Directive:
– Instruct the assembler to perform certain actions
during assembly of program.
– START : directive instruct the assembler to place
first word of the target program to generate by it
in memory word having the address (constant).
• START 100  Set LC=100
– END : directive indicate the end of the source
program.

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 Assembly Language Statements

– ORIGIN : directive instruct the assembler to put

the address given by address specification in the
location counter.
• ORGIN 200  Set LC = 200
– EQU : directive assigns the address of one symbol
to other label, location counter is not affected due
to EQU directive.
• LABEL EQU LOOP  Here LABEL will get the
address of LOOP

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 Assembly Language Statements
– LTORG : ‘ORIGIN FOR LITERALS’. LTORG specify where literals
should be placed. After LTORG and END statements
assembler allocates memory to the literal of literal pool and
clears the literal pool.
– USING : The USING statement tells the assembler to
associate the address in R with label. It also tells the
assembler which register to use when converting implicit
addresses to explicit addresses.
• USING label, R
– DROP : The DROP informs the assembler that registers R1,
R2, … , RN are no longer to be associated with the label or
that the specified register is not supposed to be used to
convert implicit addresses to explicit addresses.

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 Databases used by Assemblers
• LC : Location Counter, used to keep track of
next instruction to be executed.
• MOT : Machine operation table, contain a field
[mnemonic opcode, class and mnemonic
information (information code of IS, length)].
It is of 6 bytes. It is a fixed length table.

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 Databases used by Assemblers
• POT : Pseudo Op-code Table, contain a field
[mnemonic op-code, class and mnemonic
information (routine number)]. Each entry is
of 8 bytes. It is a fixed length table.

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 Databases used by Assemblers
• ST or SYMTAB : Symbol Table, is for storing
each label (variable name) and it’s value. Used
to keep track of symbols that are defined in
the program and giving them a location in
memory.

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 Databases used by Assemblers

• LT or LTTAB : Literal Table, is for storing each

literal and it’s location in memory. Literals will
be always encountered in the operation field
of an instruction.

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 Databases used by Assemblers

• POOLTAB : The literals processed by the assembler are

collected and placed in a special area called the literal
pool.
– Awareness of different literal pools is maintained using the
auxiliary table POOLTAB.
– POOLTAB contains the literal number of the starting literal
of each literal pool.
– At any stage, the current literal pool is the last pool in the
LITTAB.
– On encountering LTORG statement (or the END statement),
literals in the current pool are allocated addresses starting
with the current value in LC and LC is appropriately
incremented.

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 Databases used by Assemblers

• MOT + POT = OPTAB:

– OPTAB contains the field mnemonics op-codes, class
and mnemonics information.
– The Class field indicates whether the op-code belongs
to an imperative statement (IS), a declarative
statement (DS) or an assembler directive (AD).
– If an imperative, the mnemonics information field
contains the pair (machine code, instruction length),
else it contains the id of routine to handle the
declaration statement or assembler directive
statement.

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TWO PASS ASSEMBLER

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 Two Pass Assembler

• Convert mnemonic operation codes to their

machine language equivalents.
• Convert symbolic operands to their equivalent
machine addresses.
• Build the machine instructions in the proper
format.
• Convert the data constants to internal machine
representations.
• Write the object program and the assembly
listing.

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 Two Pass Assembler

PASS 1 is the ANALYSIS PHASE

AND
Source PASS 2 is the SYNTHESIS PHASE
Program

PASS 1 Intermediate PASS 2 Object

Code Code

OPTAB SYMTAB SYMTAB

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 Design of Two Pass Assembler

• Pass 1:
– Separate the symbols, literals, mnemonics and
operand fields.
– Build the Symbol and Literal Table.
– Perform LC processing
– Construct intermediate representation
• Pass 2:
– Synthesize the target code

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Two Pass Assembler

Pool Table

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Two Pass Assembler

Pool Table
Pool Table
0
1
2
3
4
5
5
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Two Pass Assembler

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Two Pass Assembler

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 Assembly Codes for Practice
• JOHN START 0
• START 200
• USING *, 15
• MOVER AREG, =‘5’ • L 1, FIVE
• MOVEM AREG, X • A 1, FOUR
• L MOVER BREG, =‘2’ • ST 1, TEMP
• ORIGIN L + 3 • FOUR DC F’4’
• LTORG • FIVE DC F’5’
• TEMP DS 1F
• X DS 1
• END
• END

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 Pass 1 Flowchart

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 Pass 2 Flowchart

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 Pass 1 Algorithm

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 Pass 1 Algorithm

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 Pass 1 Algorithm

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 Pass 2 Algorithm

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 Pass 2 Algorithm

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 Pass 2 Algorithm

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SINGLE PASS ASSEMBLER
or
ONE PASS ASSEMBLER

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 Single Pass Assembler

• A single pass assembler scans the program

only once and creates the equivalent binary
program.
• The assembler substitute all the symbolic
instruction with machine code in one pass.

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 Single Pass Assembler

Source POOLTAB
Program
LITTAB

Object
SINGLE PASS
Code
ASSEMBLER

SYMTAB

MOT POT

TII

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Single Pass Assembler

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Single Pass Assembler

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Single Pass Assembler

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 Forward Reference Problem

• Rules for an assembly program states that the

symbol should be defines somewhere in the
program.
• But in some cases a symbol may be used prior
to its definition. Such a reference is called
forward reference.
• Due to this assembler cannot assemble the
instructions and such a problem is called
forward reference problem.

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 Solution of FRP for One-Pass
Assembler
• The process of forward references is tackled using a
process called back patching.
• The operand field of an instruction containing forward
references is left blank initially.
• A table of instruction containing forward references is
maintained separately called table of incomplete
instruction (TII).
• This table can be used to fill up the addresses in
incomplete instruction.
• The address of the forward references symbols is put
back in the blank field with the help of back patching
list.

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 Solution of FRP for Two-Pass
Assembler
• During the first pass
– Symbol table and is maintained.
– When ever a undefined symbol is encountered it
is inserted into the Symbol table without the
address of that symbol.
– When symbol declaration is found, then its
address is stored in the symbol table.
• During the second pass
– Translation from source to machine language
actually take place. Symbol addresses are then
used from symbol table instead of their names.
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 Looking for Modularity while
designing the passes

• While designing an assembler some functions

can be isolated.
• Such functions fall into two categories:
– Multi-use
– Unique

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Functions that can be isolated in Pass
1

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 Looking for Modularity while designing
the passes

• Each of these functions should independently go

through the entire design process (problem statement,
databases, algorithm, modularity etc.
• These functions can be implemented as separate
external subroutines, as internal subroutines, or as
sections of the pass 1 and pass 2 programs.
• In any case, the ability to treat functions separately
makes it much easier to design the structure of
assembler and each of its parts.
• Thus, rather than viewing the assembler as a single
program, we view it as a coordinated collection of
routines each of relatively minor size and complexity.

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Functions that can be isolated in Pass
2

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