Assembly

Assembly is a low-level programming language that's one step above a computer's native machine language. Although assembly language is commonly used for writing device drivers, emulators, and video games, many programmers find its somewhat unfriendly syntax intimidating to learn and use.

Since 1996, Randall Hyde's The Art of Assembly Language has provided a comprehensive, plain-English, and patient introduction to 32-bit x86 assembly for non-assembly programmers. Hyde's primary teaching tool, High Level Assembler (or HLA), incorporates many of the features found in high-level languages (like C, C++, and Java) to help you quickly grasp basic assembly concepts. HLA lets you write true low-level code while enjoying the benefits of high-level language programming.

As you read The Art of Assembly Language, you'll learn the low-level theory fundamental to computer science and turn that understanding into real, functional code.

You'll learn how to:

• Edit, compile, and run HLA programs
• Declare and use constants, scalar variables, pointers, arrays, structures, unions, and namespaces
• Translate arithmetic expressions (integer and floating point)
• Convert high-level control structures

This much anticipated second edition of The Art of Assembly Language has been updated to reflect recent changes to HLA and to support Linux, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD. Whether you're new to programming or you have experience with high-level languages, The Art of Assembly Language, 2nd Edition is your essential guide to learning this complex, low-level language.

Computers are everywhere — most obviously in our laptops and smartphones, but also our cars, televisions, microwave ovens, alarm clocks, robot vacuum cleaners, and other smart appliances. Have you ever wondered what goes on inside these devices to make our lives easier but occasionally more infuriating?

For more than 20 years, readers have delighted in Charles Petzolds illuminating story of the secret inner life of computers, and now he has revised it for this new age of computing. Cleverly illustrated and easy to understand, this is the book that cracks the mystery. You'll discover what flashlights, black cats, seesaws, and the ride of Paul Revere can teach you about computing — and how human ingenuity and our compulsion to communicate have shaped every electronic device we use.

This new expanded edition explores more deeply the bit-by-bit, gate-by-gate construction of the heart of every smart device the central processing unit that combines the simplest of basic operations to perform the most complex of feats. Along with new chapters, Petzold has created a new website, CodeHiddenLanguage.com, that uses animated interactive graphics to make computers even easier to comprehend.

From the simple ticking of clocks to the worldwide hum of the internet, Code reveals the essence of the digital revolution.

Introduction to Computer Organization gives programmers a practical understanding of what happens in a computer when you execute your code. You may never have to write x86-64 assembly language or design hardware yourself, but knowing how the hardware and software works will give you greater control and confidence over your coding decisions. We start with high level fundamental concepts like memory organization, binary logic, and data types and then explore how they are implemented at the assembly language level.

The goal isn’t to make you an assembly programmer, but to help you comprehend what happens behind the scenes between running your program and seeing “Hello World” displayed on the screen. Classroom-tested for over a decade, this book will demystify topics like:

• How to translate a high-level language code into assembly language
• How the operating system manages hardware resources with exceptions and interrupts
• How data is encoded in memory
• How hardware switches handle decimal data
• How program code gets transformed into machine code the computer understands
• How pieces of hardware like the CPU, input/output, and memory interact to make the entire system work.

Are you a software developer, systems designer, or computer architecture student looking for a methodical introduction to digital device architectures, but are overwhelmed by the complexity of modern systems? This step-by-step guide will teach you how modern computer systems work with the help of practical examples and exercises. You’ll gain insights into the internal behavior of processors down to the circuit level and will understand how the hardware executes code developed in high-level languages.

This book will teach you the fundamentals of computer systems including transistors, logic gates, sequential logic, and instruction pipelines. You will learn details of modern processor architectures and instruction sets including x86, x64, ARM, and RISC-V. You will see how to implement a RISC-V processor in a low-cost FPGA board and write a quantum computing program and run it on an actual quantum computer.

This edition has been updated to cover the architecture and design principles underlying the important domains of cybersecurity, blockchain and bitcoin mining, and self-driving vehicles.

By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of modern processors and computer architecture and the future directions these technologies are likely to take.

What you will learn

• Understand the fundamentals of transistor technology and digital circuits
• Explore the concepts underlying pipelining and superscalar processing
• Implement a complete RISC-V processor in a low-cost FPGA
• Understand the technology used to implement virtual machines
• Learn about security-critical computing applications like financial transaction processing
• Get up to speed with blockchain and the hardware architectures used in bitcoin mining
• Explore the capabilities of self-navigating vehicle computing architectures
• Write a quantum computing program and run it on a real quantum computer

Who this book is for

This book is for software developers, computer engineering students, system designers, reverse engineers, and anyone looking to understand the architecture and design principles underlying modern computer systems: ranging from tiny, embedded devices to warehouse-size cloud server farms. A general understanding of computer processors is helpful but not required.

Randall Hyde's The Art of Assembly Language has long been the go-to guide for learning assembly language. In this long-awaited follow-up, Hyde presents a 64-bit rewrite of his seminal text. It not only covers the instruction set for today’s x86-64 class of processors in-depth (using MASM), but also leads you through the maze of assembly language programming and machine organization by showing you how to write code that mimics operations in high-level languages.

Beginning with a “quick-start” chapter that gets you writing basic ASM applications as rapidly as possible, Hyde covers the fundamentals of machine organization, computer data representation and operations, and memory access. He’ll teach you assembly language programming, starting with basic data types and arithmetic, progressing through control structures and arithmetic to advanced topics like table lookups and string manipulation. In addition to the standard integer instruction set, the book covers the x87 FPU, single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) instructions, and MASM’s very powerful macro facilities. Throughout, you’ll benefit from a wide variety of ready-to-use library routines that simplify the programming process.

You’ll learn how to:

• Write standalone programs or link MASM programs with C/C++ code for calling routines in the C Standard Library
• Organize variable declarations to speed up access to data, and how to manipulate data on the x86-64 stack
• Implement HLL data structures and control structures in assembly language
• Convert various numeric formats, like integer to decimal string, floating-point to string, and hexadecimal string to integer
• Write parallel algorithms using SSE/AVX (SIMD) instructions
• Use macros to reduce the effort needed to write assembly language code

The Art of 64-bit Assembly, Volume 1 builds on the timeless material of its iconic predecessor, offering a comprehensive masterclass on writing complete applications in low-level programming languages.