NAME
yasm_arch - Yasm Supported Target Architectures
SYNOPSIS
yasm -a arch [-m machine] ...
DESCRIPTION
The standard Yasm distribution includes a number of modules for
different target architectures. Each target architecture can support
one or more machine architectures.
The architecture and machine are selected on the yasm(1) command line
by use of the -a arch and -m machine command line options,
respectively.
The machine architecture may also automatically be selected by certain
object formats. For example, the "elf32" object format selects the
"x86" machine architecture by default, while the "elf64" object format
selects the "amd64" machine architecture by default.
X86 ARCHITECTURE
The "x86" architecture supports the IA-32 instruction set and
derivatives and the AMD64 instruction set. It consists of two machines:
"x86" (for the IA-32 and derivatives) and "amd64" (for the AMD64 and
derivatives). The default machine for the "x86" architecture is the
"x86" machine.
BITS Setting
The x86 architecture BITS setting specifies to Yasm the processor mode
in which the generated code is intended to execute. x86 processors can
run in three different major execution modes: 16-bit, 32-bit, and on
AMD64-supporting processors, 64-bit. As the x86 instruction set
contains portions whose function is execution-mode dependent (such as
operand-size and address-size override prefixes), Yasm cannot assemble
x86 instructions correctly unless it is told by the user in what
processor mode the code will execute.
The BITS setting can be changed in a variety of ways. When using the
NASM-compatible parser, the BITS setting can be changed directly via
the use of the BITS xx assembler directive. The default BITS setting is
determined by the object format in use.
BITS 64 Extensions
The AMD64 architecture is a new 64-bit architecture developed by AMD,
based on the 32-bit x86 architecture. It extends the original x86
architecture by doubling the number of general purpose and SIMD
registers, extending the arithmetic operations and address space to 64
bits, as well as other features.
Recently, Intel has introduced an essentially identical version of
AMD64 called EM64T.
When an AMD64-supporting processor is executing in 64-bit mode, a
number of additional extensions are available, including extra general
purpose registers, extra SSE2 registers, and RIP-relative addressing.
Yasm extends the base NASM syntax to support AMD64 as follows. To
enable assembly of instructions for the 64-bit mode of AMD64
processors, use the directive BITS 64. As with NASM's BITS directive,
this does not change the format of the output object file to 64 bits;
it only changes the assembler mode to assume that the instructions
being assembled will be run in 64-bit mode. To specify an AMD64 object
file, use -m amd64 on the Yasm command line, or explicitly target a
64-bit object format such as -f win64 or -f elf64.
Register Changes
The additional 64-bit general purpose registers are named
r8-r15. There are also 8-bit (rXb), 16-bit (rXw), and 32-bit
(rXd) subregisters that map to the least significant 8, 16, or
32 bits of the 64-bit register. The original 8 general purpose
registers have also been extended to 64-bits: eax, edx, ecx,
ebx, esi, edi, esp, and ebp have new 64-bit versions called rax,
rdx, rcx, rbx, rsi, rdi, rsp, and rbp respectively. The old
32-bit registers map to the least significant bits of the new
64-bit registers.
New 8-bit registers are also available that map to the 8 least
significant bits of rsi, rdi, rsp, and rbp. These are called
sil, dil, spl, and bpl respectively. Unfortunately, due to the
way instructions are encoded, these new 8-bit registers are
encoded the same as the old 8-bit registers ah, dh, ch, and bh.
The processor tells which is being used by the presence of the
new REX prefix that is used to specify the other extended
registers. This means it is illegal to mix the use of ah, dh,
ch, and bh with an instruction that requires the REX prefix for
other reasons. For instance:
add ah, [r10]
(NASM syntax) is not a legal instruction because the use of r10
requires a REX prefix, making it impossible to use ah.
In 64-bit mode, an additional 8 SSE2 registers are also
available. These are named xmm8-xmm15.
64 Bit Instructions
By default, most operations in 64-bit mode remain 32-bit;
operations that are 64-bit usually require a REX prefix (one bit
in the REX prefix determines whether an operation is 64-bit or
32-bit). Thus, essentially all 32-bit instructions have a 64-bit
version, and the 64-bit versions of instructions can use
extended registers "for free" (as the REX prefix is already
present). Examples in NASM syntax:
mov eax, 1 ; 32-bit instruction
mov rcx, 1 ; 64-bit instruction
Instructions that modify the stack (push, pop, call, ret, enter,
and leave) are implicitly 64-bit. Their 32-bit counterparts are
not available, but their 16-bit counterparts are. Examples in
NASM syntax:
push eax ; illegal instruction
push rbx ; 1-byte instruction
push r11 ; 2-byte instruction with REX prefix
Implicit Zero Extension
Results of 32-bit operations are implicitly zero-extended to the
upper 32 bits of the corresponding 64-bit register. 16 and 8 bit
operations, on the other hand, do not affect upper bits of the
register (just as in 32-bit and 16-bit modes). This can be used
to generate smaller code in some instances. Examples in NASM
syntax:
mov ecx, 1 ; 1 byte shorter than mov rcx, 1
and edx, 3 ; equivalent to and rdx, 3
Immediates
For most instructions in 64-bit mode, immediate values remain 32
bits; their value is sign-extended into the upper 32 bits of the
target register prior to being used. The exception is the mov
instruction, which can take a 64-bit immediate when the
destination is a 64-bit register. Examples in NASM syntax:
add rax, 1 ; optimized down to signed 8-bit
add rax, dword 1 ; force size to 32-bit
add rax, 0xffffffff ; sign-extended 32-bit
add rax, -1 ; same as above
add rax, 0xffffffffffffffff ; truncated to 32-bit (warning)
mov eax, 1 ; 5 byte
mov rax, 1 ; 5 byte (optimized to signed 32-bit)
mov rax, qword 1 ; 10 byte (forced 64-bit)
mov rbx, 0x1234567890abcdef ; 10 byte
mov rcx, 0xffffffff ; 10 byte (does not fit in signed 32-bit)
mov ecx, -1 ; 5 byte, equivalent to above
mov rcx, sym ; 5 byte, 32-bit size default for symbols
mov rcx, qword sym ; 10 byte, override default size
The handling of mov reg64, unsized immediate is different
between YASM and NASM 2.x; YASM follows the above behavior,
while NASM 2.x does the following:
add rax, 0xffffffff ; sign-extended 32-bit immediate
add rax, -1 ; same as above
add rax, 0xffffffffffffffff ; truncated 32-bit (warning)
add rax, sym ; sign-extended 32-bit immediate
mov eax, 1 ; 5 byte (32-bit immediate)
mov rax, 1 ; 10 byte (64-bit immediate)
mov rbx, 0x1234567890abcdef ; 10 byte instruction
mov rcx, 0xffffffff ; 10 byte instruction
mov ecx, -1 ; 5 byte, equivalent to above
mov ecx, sym ; 5 byte (32-bit immediate)
mov rcx, sym ; 10 byte instruction
mov rcx, qword sym ; 10 byte (64-bit immediate)
Displacements
Just like immediates, displacements, for the most part, remain
32 bits and are sign extended prior to use. Again, the exception
is one restricted form of the mov instruction: between the
al/ax/eax/rax register and a 64-bit absolute address (no
registers allowed in the effective address). In NASM syntax, use
of the 64-bit absolute form requires [qword]. Examples in NASM
syntax:
mov eax, [1] ; 32 bit, with sign extension
mov al, [rax-1] ; 32 bit, with sign extension
mov al, [qword 0x1122334455667788] ; 64-bit absolute
mov al, [0x1122334455667788] ; truncated to 32-bit (warning)
RIP Relative Addressing
In 64-bit mode, a new form of effective addressing is available
to make it easier to write position-independent code. Any memory
reference may be made RIP relative (RIP is the instruction
pointer register, which contains the address of the location
immediately following the current instruction).
In NASM syntax, there are two ways to specify RIP-relative
addressing:
mov dword [rip+10], 1
stores the value 1 ten bytes after the end of the instruction.
10 can also be a symbolic constant, and will be treated the same
way. On the other hand,
mov dword [symb wrt rip], 1
stores the value 1 into the address of symbol symb. This is
distinctly different than the behavior of:
mov dword [symb+rip], 1
which takes the address of the end of the instruction, adds the
address of symb to it, then stores the value 1 there. If symb is
a variable, this will not store the value 1 into the symb
variable!
Yasm also supports the following syntax for RIP-relative
addressing:
mov [rel sym], rax ; RIP-relative
mov [abs sym], rax ; not RIP-relative
The behavior of:
mov [sym], rax
Depends on a mode set by the DEFAULT directive, as follows. The
default mode is always "abs", and in "rel" mode, use of
registers, an fs or gs segment override, or an explicit "abs"
override will result in a non-RIP-relative effective address.
default rel
mov [sym], rbx ; RIP-relative
mov [abs sym], rbx ; not RIP-relative (explicit override)
mov [rbx+1], rbx ; not RIP-relative (register use)
mov [fs:sym], rbx ; not RIP-relative (fs or gs use)
mov [ds:sym], rbx ; RIP-relative (segment, but not fs or gs)
mov [rel sym], rbx ; RIP-relative (redundant override)
default abs
mov [sym], rbx ; not RIP-relative
mov [abs sym], rbx ; not RIP-relative
mov [rbx+1], rbx ; not RIP-relative
mov [fs:sym], rbx ; not RIP-relative
mov [ds:sym], rbx ; not RIP-relative
mov [rel sym], rbx ; RIP-relative (explicit override)
Memory references
Usually the size of a memory reference can be deduced by which
registers you're moving--for example, "mov [rax],ecx" is a
32-bit move, because ecx is 32 bits. YASM currently gives the
non-obvious "invalid combination of opcode and operands" error
if it can't figure out how much memory you're moving. The fix in
this case is to add a memory size specifier: qword, dword, word,
or byte.
Here's a 64-bit memory move, which sets 8 bytes starting at rax:
mov qword [rax], 1
Here's a 32-bit memory move, which sets 4 bytes:
mov dword [rax], 1
Here's a 16-bit memory move, which sets 2 bytes:
mov word [rax], 1
Here's an 8-bit memory move, which sets 1 byte:
mov byte [rax], 1
LC3B ARCHITECTURE
The "lc3b" architecture supports the LC-3b ISA as used in the ECE 312
(now ECE 411) course at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
as well as other university courses. See
http://courses.ece.uiuc.edu/ece411/ for more details and example code.
The "lc3b" architecture consists of only one machine: "lc3b".
SEE ALSO
yasm(1)
BUGS
When using the "x86" architecture, it is overly easy to generate AMD64
code (using the BITS 64 directive) and generate a 32-bit object file
(by failing to specify -m amd64 on the command line or selecting a
64-bit object format). Similarly, specifying -m amd64 does not default
the BITS setting to 64. An easy way to avoid this is by directly
specifying a 64-bit object format such as -f elf64.
AUTHOR
Peter Johnson <peter@tortall.net>
Author.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Peter Johnson