Chapter 14 : Program Structure

In previous chapter, we built the most important part of our microcontroller. In this chapter, we will take a look on the theory side of programs and we will define how our computer will understand programs. This is important indeed, because we need to write a simple assembler for our computer which can generate machine code for us.

Programming for a typical computer

You have a typical computer, which is compatible with Intel x86 Family. At least more than %90 of computers around me are like that. So, I can write this piece of art and run it on my own computer, yours, my friend's, etc.

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main(){
    cout << "Piece of Art!\n";
    return 0;
}

But wait! If I install a C/C++ compiler on my mobile phone, tablet or gaming console, it will work! Why? The answer is easy. We write programs for all devices, everyone can use our program. In case of lower level languages like C or C++, we need to install the compiler on the target device, but actually we can use compiler's options to compile our code for different machines. But, in case of higher level languages, like Python, we only need the interpreter on the target device, and it will work!

But let's go deeper, deep inside the Intel x86 instruction set! Let's print the expression Piece of Art on console using assembly language :

STK SEGMENT
    DW 100 DUP(?)
STK ENDS

DTS SEGMENT
    TXT DB 'Piece of Art!', 10, 13, '$'
DTS ENDS

CDS SEGMENT
    ASSUME CS:CDS, SS:STK, DS:DTS
    MAIN PROC FAR
        MOV AX, SEG DTS
        MOV DS, AX
        MOV DX, OFFSET TXT
        MOV AH, 09H
        INT 21H
        MOV AH, 4CH
        INT 21H
    MAIN ENDP
CDS ENDS
END MAIN

This is not that hard to write and understand. Anyway, we are not going to talk about assembly programming here. So, have you seen the code? But It's not actually what computer sees! The computer only sees & understands a bunch of 0 and 1's. So, imagine one the above code lines. For example this :

MOV DS, AX

When you assemble the code using assembler, it will turn this line to something like this :

B8 0000

NOTE : THIS IS NOT THE EXACT MACHINE CODE OF THAT INSTRUCTION

Letter B stands for 4 bits, also 8 stands for 4 bits. We have 8 bits Instruction Code and 16 bits hidden data in x86 family Object Code. In this chapter, we actually decide for a simple object code for our microprocessor.

Object Code

Now, we need to decide about a simple Object Code structure for our microcontroller. As I mentioned before, we won't have a register file in our microcontroller and we directly read data from RAM. You may ask why, because we can keep it simple for future developments and studies. Let's take a look at our Instruction Table, but this time, Hexadecimal :

Now, we need to upload our Programs to the microcontroller. But how? How it can detect the operands? This is a simple structure I suggest for that :

We have a simple 20-bit object code for our microcontroller. Let's see if we want to add two numbers, for example 15 and 8, how does it look like? It will be like this :

Now, we need to verify which bits are for which part. The most valuable bits can be for our instruction code, and others can be for inputs. This is what I suggest :

So, the code 0x20f08 is the correct object code for ADD 15, 8.

The Final Step?

Now we have ALU, and we will add RAM to our ALU. Then, we program it and enjoy! The book is almost finished, and there's nothing more to say about the hardware side of a computer. But what about software and operating system? Be patient, we will take a look at software and operating systems in following chapters!