NECPU-Assembler

Assembler

How-To

• Command line usage:
  • NEASM.py [-v/-b] [source_dir] <[targer_dir]>
  • -v: full Verilog module output
  • -b: bin output (not yet implemented)
• Empty lines are allowed
• immediate must be a valid Python integer literal or expression. Note that immediate must not contain any white space characters even if you put an expression!
• immediate will be ealuated with eval() without safety checking of any sort, so please don't write anything weird here :>
  • One trick is to write LINE_NUMBER at immediate field to get the current line number~
• Comments (starting with '//') can be put on an empty line or after a valid instruction
• Don't use register 31 because it is reserved for the assembler for pseudo-instructions!

Architecture Description

The NECPU is a 32-bit general purpose register architecture processor with the specifications below. Registers $rs, $rt, and $rd are placeholders for actual general purpose registers $0, $1, $2, ..., $31, each holding a 32-bit value. immediate refers to an immediate value (constant) and label refers to label in the instruction corresponding to a specific line in the code. All immediates are given as 16-bit unsigned values. Whenever an immediate is used as an operand with a register as the other operand, the immediate is zero-extended to 32-bit before computation. All labels will be converted into actual addresses using direct addressing mode.

NECPU can accomodate up to 4294967296 (2^32) addressable memory where each memory location holds 4 bytes (32 bits). NECPU is word (4 bytes) addressable. (It is not byte addressable!)

Every instruction of NECPU takes exactly one clock cycle to complete. Hence, the time taken of a code snippet can easily be calculated.

Instruction Set

We will use the following convension to simplify our description:

• Given a register $r, the content of the register $r is given as R[$r].
• Given a memory location addr, the content at the memory location addr is M[addr].
• PC is the program counter which is a special register that holds the address of the instruction currently being executed.

Instruction Encoding

• Type A
  • SLT
  • SEQ
  • ADD
  • SUB
  • SLL
  • SRL
  • AND
  • OR
  • INV ($rt ignored)
  • XOR
• Type B
  • LW
  • SW
  • LLI ($rs ignored)
  • LUI ($rs ignored)
  • BEQ ($rs ignored)
  • BNE ($rs ignored)
  • ADDi
  • SUBi
  • ANDi
  • ORi
  • XORi
  • JMP (can also put under type A since only $rd is used)

Note that the BEQ and BNE instructions of NECPU differ from those of MIPS:

• NECPU's BEQ and BNE instructions compare a register's value with an immediate, while MIPS compares the values of two registers.
• NECPU's BEQ and BNE instructions can only skip the next one instruction if the condition is satisfied.

Pseudo-Instructions

• JUMP (unstable)
  • JUMP [label]
  • JUMP instruction complements the native JMP instruction by accepting a label instead of a raw memory address. It simplifies the programming experience.
  • To create a label, put [label]: before the instruction you want to jump to. The label can be any valid string.
  • JUMP pseudo-instruction now supports jumping forward and backward!
  • A JUMP pseudo-instruction is translated to the following 3 instructions:
    • LUI $31 [Upper half of label's address]
    • LLI $31 [Lower half of label's address]
    • JMP $31
  • Note that when a JUMP pseudo-instruction is placed right after a branch instruction, the first two LI instructions will be put before the branch instruction so that the branch instruction can choose whether to skip the JMP instruction or not.
• LWI - Load Word Immediate
  • LWI $rd, immediate
  • LWI basically combines LLI and LUI
  • immediate here is a 32-bit constant value (zero-extended)

To-Do

• Implement .data directive to support preloading data into the ROM.
  • Support loading external files into ROM (in the format of bin or bmp)
• LA (Load Address) pseudo-instruction to load the address of variable defined in the .data section

Disassembler

The disassembler is for the purpose of debugging only.

How-To

• Command line usage:
  • NEDISASM.py [verilog_instruction_rom_file_dir]
  • The disassembled file disasmout.asm will be created in the current directory