Posts in Year 2006

x86-64 TUTORIAL: HILBERT MATRIX

The aim of solving this problem is to learn how to use the XMM registers for multiplication of floating point numbers. Matrix multiplication is a slow calculation especially if the floating point unit is used, and hence doing packed floating point calculations (if double precision is not required) might just be much faster. So this program will test that.

LABOUCHERE SYSTEM PROGRAM USING x86-64 REGISTERS

This program does not use any fixed memory locations for the head or tail of the link list, but uses all the registers available to it. However, for some of the functions it does not follow the convention of saving all the registers RBX, R12-R15 on the stack at every function call since some of these registers contain pointers to the head and tail of the link list. Even if we did that, the program would hardly change much.

LABOUCHERE SYSTEM C PROGRAM

Here is the full C code for the Doubly Linked List: Labouchere System.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: DOUBLY LINKED LIST

THE LABOUCHERE SYSTEM

The Labouchere system for roulette is played as follows. Write down a list of numbers, usually 1, 2, 3, 4. Bet the sum of the first and last, i.e. 1 + 4 = 5, on red. If you win, delete the first and last numbers from the list. If you lose, add the amount that you last bet to the end of the list. Then use the new list and bet the sum of the first and last numbers (if there is only one number, bet that amount). Continue until your list becomes empty. You will see that, if this happens, you will always win the sum 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, of the original list. The below program simulates this system. Execute the program, and see if you always win!

x86-64 TUTORIAL: FACTORIAL WITH RECURSION

The calculation of a factorial of a number can be done using recursion. Below is the algorithm:

x86-64 TUTORIAL: CONDITIONAL OPERATIONS WITHOUT BRANCHING

The regular JMP and conditional Jcc jump instructions change the course of working code, the latter based on the runtime status of certain bits in the RFLAGS register. The x86 and x86-64 processors implement pipelining of instructions where they prefetch a certain number of instructions and evaluate them before time. The number of instructions prefetched is dependent on the prefetch input queue (PIQ).

x86-64 TUTORIAL: BIT SHIFTING OPERATIONS

Logical shifts are operations in which the bits of a register or memory location are moved to the right or left by a certain number or a value in the CL register. They are also a very quick way to multiply or divide by 2 or powers of 2 as it involves just a shift of bits. There are 4 shift bit instructions, 4 rotate bit instructions and 2 double precision shift bit instructions for general purpose registers.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: FIND PRIME NUMBERS

Below is a code snippet that prints a list of prime numbers, one on each line, based on a limit entered by the user. It uses both while loops and conditional branch if - else statements. We shall convert this to an assembly program to demonstrate implementation of these control flow structures in x86-64 assembly.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: MULTIPLICATION & DIVISION

In the Hello World sample program we had used the instructions REPNZ and SCASB to calculate the length of the string being printed at runtime. In this program we use NASM’s equ directive to calculate the length during assembly time as opposed to at runtime. The variable promptlen gives an example.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: INPUT OUTPUT FUNCTIONS

Here are some print functions for strings, integers and newline characters. There is also a function for reading an integer. All the code is in NASM’s syntax. The macros prologue and epilogue, are used to save space and avoid repetitiveness.

NOTE: Remember that the registers RBP, RBX and R12-R15 need to be saved across function calls.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: HELLO WORLD!

Below is a program that prints "Hello World!" on screen followed by a newline character. In the data section we first store the string "Hello World!", followed by the newline character which has an ASCII value of 10 and the NULL character or the value 0. The NULL character is used here because of the way we calculate the string length. There are other ways to calculate the string length as well, by using NASM’s directives like equ, but we shall use that in another sample program.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: CPUID

The x86 and x86-64 instruction sets have an instruction called CPUID that tells the program who made the CPU and what features it may have. We try to get that info using x86-64 assembly in this tutorial.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: CALLING CONVENTIONS

SYSTEM CALLS

System calls are made using the syscall instruction on an x86-64 version of GNU/Linux as opposed to using int 0x80 on an x86 version of GNU/Linux. All programs are in long mode. Depending on the type of GNU/Linux system you use, the list of system calls can be found in /usr/include/asm/unistd_64.h for Debian-based systems or in /usr/include/asm-x86_64/unistd.h for Slackware, etc.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: ASSEMBLERS

2020 UPDATE

In 2006, there was only YASM that supported both the 32-bit x86 and the 64-bit x86-64 or amd64 instruction set. NASM only supported the 32-bit x86 instruction set. Today, in 2020, NASM also suppports the 64-bit x86-64 instruction set. Both YASM and NASM are under active development, with YASM being fully cross-platform and working with Visual Studio 2019 as of this update in August 2020. Wherever possible, we have made sure that the programs run under both YASM and NASM.

x86-64 TUTORIAL: ABI

ABI is an abbreviation for Application Binary Interface. Every processor’s instruction set has an ABI. This allows the developer to write code in the correct format that the processor is designed to accept. The x86-64 ABI document can be found at the following links:

x86-64 TUTORIAL: INTRODUCTION

This is a sort of tutorial on programming in assembly using the x86-64 or amd64 instruction set valid for the AMD64 and EM64T processors.