3 ms·

Is there a good place to begin to learn about this stuff from the ground up? Maybe a user friendly compiler written for the purpose of education?

minimax 13y ago
The shallow end of the pool is simple RISC CPUs e.g. Atmel 8-bit AVR. The complete instruction manual is something like 160 pages (compare to x86 at 3k+) and there are tons of beginner resources for doing assembler on those chips.
- xradionut 13y ago
  There's more structured material for MIPS than AVR. Plus the AVR has some funky memory maps and modes.
  - StephenFalken 13y ago
    This all time classic from MIPS is a good starting point: "MIPS R4000 Microprocessor User's Manual" [1] [1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cag/raw/documents/R4400_Uman_book_Ed2.pdf http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cag/raw/documents/R4400_Uman_boo...
hvs 13y ago
From the ground up? Well, there's always the source: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectures-software-developer-manuals.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectu... For learning assembly? For MASM I enjoyed this book years ago: http://www.amazon.com/Assembly-Language-Intel-Based-Computers-5th/dp/0132383101/ http://www.amazon.com/Assembly-Language-Intel-Based-Computer... For GAS something like this might be more appropriate: http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Assembly-Language-Richard-Blum/dp/0764579010/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381333909&sr=1-4&keywords=assembly+language http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Assembly-Language-Richard... Patterson & Hennessy is used a lot in colleges to teach low-level architecture and assembly: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitative-Approach/dp/012383872X/ http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitati...
deletes 13y ago
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27568/assembler-ide-simulator-for-beginner http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27568/assembler-ide-simul...
hmottestad 13y ago
There is a developer friendly virtual machine called Bochs. It can be hooked to a debugger so you can see what is happening. I prefer DDD for debugging hooked to GDB (backend). Here is an assembly cheat sheet that I like a lot: http://www.jegerlehner.ch/intel/ http://www.jegerlehner.ch/intel/ Also GCC can output assembly if you want to see what simple C code looks like in assembly http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137038/how-do-you-get-assembler-output-from-c-c-source-in-gcc http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137038/how-do-you-get-ass... Finally I would say that the recommended method of learning about all of this and more is to take a course at uni. You should take C programming and operating system architecture where you should learn assembly. Then you should take a course where you get to build you own OS (http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF3151/index-eng.html http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF3151/index-eng...) followed by a course on multi core architecture (http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5063/ http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5063/)
polymathist 13y ago
I would recommend not jumping right into x86 and instead starting with something simpler. I learned MIPS in school. The instruction set is very easy to wrap your head around. MIPS Quick Tutorial: http://logos.cs.uic.edu/366/notes/mips%20quick%20tutorial.htm http://logos.cs.uic.edu/366/notes/mips%20quick%20tutorial.ht... A simulator that will let you run MIPS on windows/linux/mac: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html

minimax 13y ago

The shallow end of the pool is simple RISC CPUs e.g. Atmel 8-bit AVR. The complete instruction manual is something like 160 pages (compare to x86 at 3k+) and there are tons of beginner resources for doing assembler on those chips.

xradionut 13y ago
There's more structured material for MIPS than AVR. Plus the AVR has some funky memory maps and modes.
- StephenFalken 13y ago
  This all time classic from MIPS is a good starting point: "MIPS R4000 Microprocessor User's Manual" [1] [1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cag/raw/documents/R4400_Uman_book_Ed2.pdf http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cag/raw/documents/R4400_Uman_boo...

hvs 13y ago

From the ground up? Well, there's always the source: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectures-software-developer-manuals.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectu... For learning assembly? For MASM I enjoyed this book years ago: http://www.amazon.com/Assembly-Language-Intel-Based-Computers-5th/dp/0132383101/ http://www.amazon.com/Assembly-Language-Intel-Based-Computer... For GAS something like this might be more appropriate: http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Assembly-Language-Richard-Blum/dp/0764579010/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381333909&sr=1-4&keywords=assembly+language http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Assembly-Language-Richard... Patterson & Hennessy is used a lot in colleges to teach low-level architecture and assembly: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitative-Approach/dp/012383872X/ http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitati...

deletes 13y ago

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27568/assembler-ide-simulator-for-beginner http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27568/assembler-ide-simul...

hmottestad 13y ago

There is a developer friendly virtual machine called Bochs. It can be hooked to a debugger so you can see what is happening. I prefer DDD for debugging hooked to GDB (backend). Here is an assembly cheat sheet that I like a lot: http://www.jegerlehner.ch/intel/ http://www.jegerlehner.ch/intel/ Also GCC can output assembly if you want to see what simple C code looks like in assembly http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137038/how-do-you-get-assembler-output-from-c-c-source-in-gcc http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137038/how-do-you-get-ass... Finally I would say that the recommended method of learning about all of this and more is to take a course at uni. You should take C programming and operating system architecture where you should learn assembly. Then you should take a course where you get to build you own OS (http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF3151/index-eng.html http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF3151/index-eng...) followed by a course on multi core architecture (http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5063/ http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5063/)

polymathist 13y ago

I would recommend not jumping right into x86 and instead starting with something simpler. I learned MIPS in school. The instruction set is very easy to wrap your head around. MIPS Quick Tutorial: http://logos.cs.uic.edu/366/notes/mips%20quick%20tutorial.htm http://logos.cs.uic.edu/366/notes/mips%20quick%20tutorial.ht... A simulator that will let you run MIPS on windows/linux/mac: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html