EDIT: Lutz Euler points out that the NEXT sequence (used to) encode an effective address with an index register but no base. The mistake doesn’t affect the meaning of the instruction, but forces a wasteful encoding. The difference in machine … Read more
In the first article in this series on developing for Apple Silicon Macs using assembly language, I built a simple framework AsmAttic to use as the basis for developing ARM assembly language routines. In that, I provided a short and … Read more
Assembly programming is nowadays seen as niche at best. And more often than not as needlessly meticulous, demanding, and wasteful even for its niches. Assembly is hard. It is unfriendly. Programming in assembly language is slow and error-prone. This is … Read more
ARM64 is a computer architecture that competes with the popular Intel x86-64 architecture used for the CPUs in desktops, laptops, and so on. ARM64 is common in mobile phones, as well as Graviton-based Amazon EC2 instances and the much ballyhooed … Read more
Why, in 2021, does anyone need to learn about assembly language? First, reading assembly language is the way to know exactly what your program is doing. Why, exactly, is that C++ program 1 MiB (say) instead of 100 KiB? Is … Read more