Skip to main content

Questions tagged [assembly]

An assembly language is a low-level programming language for a computer, microcontroller, or other programmable device, in which each statement corresponds to a single machine code instruction.

-4 votes
0 answers
56 views

Confusion regarding content in pictures for branching micro-operation [closed]

Picture 1 About branching micro-operation. Picture 2 Reference architecture for micro-operations. Confusion: MAR <- IR (address) & DR <- PC (Both micro-operations can be performed in ...
Amar Singh Sidhu's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
203 views

Why does jl test for the second operand of cmp to be less than the first, instead of the other way around?

Something like this cmp $0, %eax jl exit jumps to the exit: label if the content of register eax is less than 0. So it's kind of jl applies the < operator to the operands of cmp, but in reverse ...
Enlico's user avatar
  • 130
-1 votes
1 answer
108 views

Debugging miscompile [closed]

Recently I encountered an issue at work where a unit test written in C++ would crash only when being compiled with MSVC 2017 (MSVC 2019 and up are fine). I tried to debug this issue and it seems like ...
yijiem's user avatar
  • 107
6 votes
3 answers
1k views

How does a JIT compiler actually emit and then call the emitted native code?

Assuming that a VM runs a JIT compiler on otherwise "interpreted" code, such as a line by line interpreter or some form of bytecode/IL code and determines that it can create optimised native ...
AIWalker's user avatar
  • 1,317
-3 votes
1 answer
384 views

When making a compiler, what's the best way for compiling to machine code in the backend? [closed]

I know that a lot of compilers use an assembler to compile to machine code, to make an executable (compiled program). Some people even made their own assemblers, or they just use an existing assembler,...
Jack Murrow's user avatar
-5 votes
2 answers
148 views

Archival-quality future-proof pseudo-CPU architecture

Suppose we maintain a massive electronic library of texts/photos/videos etc., and want to ensure that these files are readable indefinitely long in the future. [Update] one of the major problems with ...
Ilya Zakharevich's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
167 views

Where to put files (interfaces) that link two independent assemblies: Authentication and Main Program

I'm having an issue with dependencies in a C# app that I'm creating. I have an assembly for my authentication process, and a separate assembly for starting up the main program once authentication is ...
Adam B's user avatar
  • 1,645
2 votes
1 answer
368 views

How do these two ways of enforcing alignment work together?

In Computer Systems: a Programmer's Perspective, Alignment is enforced by making sure that every data type is organized and allocated in such a way that every object within the type satisfies its ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 5,485
-1 votes
3 answers
231 views

Is an assembly program a procedure itself and does it occupy a stack frame?

If I am correct, an assembly language uses the program stack to store data. Is it correct that the program stack is partitioned to frames, each of which is for a call to a procedure? So there is no ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 5,485
-1 votes
1 answer
87 views

What specifies the agreement (i.e. the convention) of which registers are used to pass which arguments and to return which values?

In Computer Systems: a Programmer's Perspective: procedure calls may involve passing data as arguments, and returning from a procedure may also involve returning a value. With x86-64, most of these ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 5,485
0 votes
2 answers
350 views

Do differences between ATT and Intel formats of assembly languages come from differences between their underlying machine languages?

From Computer Systems: a Programmer's Perspective, about assembly languages: We see that the Intel and ATT formats differ in the following ways: The Intel code omits the size designation suffixes. We ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 5,485
0 votes
3 answers
193 views

Does the assembler perform the same tasks as the translator from C to assembly?

When compiling C programs to assembly programs and then to machine programs, does the assembler (e.g. the one used in GCC or other popular C compilers) perform the same tasks as the translator from C ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 5,485
-3 votes
2 answers
232 views

Why will it take approximately 2 years for Apple to transition Mac to ARM? [closed]

Why will it take that long to transition all Mac software to ARM according to Apple? I thought all they would need to do is to recompile the source code of their apps and rewrite SIMD code from intel ...
mbl's user avatar
  • 111
-2 votes
3 answers
176 views

If you're building an algorithm from the C stdlib in pure Assembly (with no help), what is the best workflow for debugging/iterating?

I am a JavaScript developer mainly, so I am familiar with object-oriented code and dealing with things you can see easily and interact with, like the GUI, even HTTP requests, etc. Plus you can put ...
Lance's user avatar
  • 2,615
10 votes
1 answer
3k views

Why is Assembly Language called "Assembly"?

Why is assembly language called "assembly"? I was just watching the 1st video in the "Crockford on JavaScript" series. In it, Douglas says, ". . . the first program to make programming easier was ...
katzbatz's user avatar
  • 327

15 30 50 per page
1
2 3 4 5
12