Instruction Operand Addressing on x86

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Instruction Operand Addressing on x86

Indirect Memory Operands
Address Displacements
Multiple Address Displacements
Specifying Operand Size
Indirect Syntax Options
Scaling Factors
Relation of Base Registers to Memory Segments
Addressing Instruction Operands Summary

1. Indirect Memory Operands

Like direct memory operands, indirect memory operands specify the contents of a given address.
However, the processor calculates the address at run time by referring to the contents of registers.
Since values in the registers can change at run time, indirect memory operands provide dynamic access to memory.
Indirect memory operands make possible run-time operations such as pointer indirection and dynamic indexing of array elements, including indexing of multidimensional arrays.
For example, the following instruction moves into AX the word value found at the address in DS:BX.
```
        mov     ax, WORD PTR [bx]
```
where
- WORD specifies the data size
- PTR re-casts memory location pointed by [BX] into the WORD-sized value.
When you specify more than one register, the processor adds the contents of the two addresses together to determine the effective address (the address of the data to operate on):
```
        mov     ax, [bx+si]
```

2. Address Displacements

Address displacement is a constant value added to the effective address.

A direct memory specifier is the most common type of displacement:

    table   WORD    100 DUP (0)
            .
            .
            .
            mov     ax, table[ esi ]

In relocatable expression table[ esi ] , the displacement is table, providing the base address of an array
ESI holds an index to an array element. The ESI value is calculated at run time, often in a loop.

3. Multiple Address Displacements

Each displacement can be an address or numeric constant.
If there is more than one displacement, the assembler totals them at assembly time and encodes the total displacement.

For example, in the statement

    table   WORD    100 DUP (0)
            .
            .
            .
            mov     ax, table[bx][di]+6

both table and 6 are displacements.

4. Specifying Operand Size

You must give the size of an indirect memory operand in one of three ways:
- By the variable's declared size
- With the PTR operator (which acts similar to C-style cast)
- Implied by the size of the other operand.

The following lines illustrate all three methods, assuming the size of the table array is WORD, as declared earlier.

        table   WORD    100 DUP (0)
        .
        .
        .
        mov     table[bx], 0      ; 2 bytes - from size of table
        mov     BYTE PTR table, 0 ; 1 byte  - specified by BYTE
        mov     ax, [bx]          ; 2 bytes - implied by AX

5. Indirect Syntax Options

The assembler allows a variety of syntaxes for indirect memory operands.
However, all registers must be inside brackets.
Each register can be enclosed in its own pair of brackets, or in the same pair of brackets separated by a plus operator (+).

The following variations are legal and assemble the same way:

        mov     ax, table[bx][di]
        mov     ax, table[di][bx]
        mov     ax, table[bx+di]
        mov     ax, [table+bx+di]
        mov     ax, [bx][di]+table

All of these statements move the value in table indexed by BX+DI into AX.

6. Scaling Factors

You can use scaling to index into arrays with different sizes of elements.
For example, the scaling factor is
- 1 for byte arrays (no scaling needed),
- 2 for word arrays,
- 4 for doubleword arrays,
- and 8 for quadword arrays.
There is no performance penalty for using a scaling factor.

Scaling is illustrated in the following examples:

    mov     eax, darray[edx*4]     ; Load double of double array
    mov     eax, [esi*8][edi]      ; Load double of quad array
    mov     ax, wtbl[ecx+2][edx*2] ; Load word of word array

7. Relation of Base Registers to Memory Segments

In indirect memory addressing the base register identifies which segment register will be used to calculate the actual memory location.
Therefore, we need to understand the rules that define which register is the base register in indirect memory addressing mode.
The default segment register is SS if the base register is EBP or ESP.
However, if EBP is scaled, the processor treats it as an index register with a value relative to DS, not SS.
All other base registers are relative to DS.
If two registers are used, only one can have a scaling factor.
The register with the scaling factor is defined as the index register.
The other register is defined as the base register.
If scaling is not used, the first register is the base.
If only one register is used, it is considered the base for deciding the default segment, unless it is scaled.

The following examples illustrate how to determine the base register:

        mov   eax, [edx][ebp*4] ; EDX base (not scaled - seg DS)
        mov   eax, [edx*1][ebp] ; EBP base (not scaled - seg SS)
        mov   eax, [edx][ebp]   ; EDX base (first - seg DS)
        mov   eax, [ebp][edx]   ; EBP base (first - seg SS)
        mov   eax, [ebp]        ; EBP base (only - seg SS)
        mov   eax, [ebp*2]      ; EBP*2 index (seg DS)

8. Addressing Instruction Operands Summary

Immediate Mode (memory is not accessed) - operand is part of the instruction. For example, a constant encoded in the instruction:
```
            mov eax,567
            mov ah, 09h
            mov dx, offset Prompt
```
Register Addressing (memory is not accessed) - operand contained in register:
```
            add ax, bx
```

Direct Mode (memory accessed once) - operand field of instruction contains address of the operand:

      value dword 0
            ..
            add eax, value        ; Either notation does the
            add eax, [value]      ; same thing

Assembly code

        tbl DW 20 DUP (0)
            ..
            mov [tbl], 56

is equivalent to C statement


            tbl[ 0 ] = 56; // C code

register indirect addressing (aka indirect addressing mode) often used for addressing data arrays inside programming loops:
- Effective address of operand contained in a register.
- For 32-bit addressing, all 32-bit registers can be used.
- For 16-bit addressing, the offset value can be in one of the three registers: BX, SI, or DI:
```
            mov bx, offset Table  ; Load address
            add ax, [bx]          ; Register indirect addressing
```
- Square brackets [ BX ] indicate that BX is holding a memory offset.
- Operand [ BX ] serves as a pointer to data in memory.
- Register indirect can be used to implement arrays. For example, to sum an array of word-length integers,
```
            mov cx, size          ; set up size of Table
            mov bx, offset Table  ; BX <- address of Table
            xor ax, ax            ; zero out Sum
     Loop1:
            add ax, [bx]
            inc bx      ; each word is 2 bytes long, so
            inc bx      ; need to increment BX twice!
            loop Loop1
```
Indexing: constant base + register.
- Fixed Base (address) + Variable Register Offset (operand field contains a constant base)
- Effective address is obtained by adding value of operand field to contents of register.
- This is known as array type addressing, also called displacement addressing.
```
            mov eax, [ ebx + 5 ]
            mov eax, [ ebx + esi + 5 ]
```
- There are restrictions on the combinations of registers allowed within the brackets: you can have ESI or EDI, but not both, and you can have EBX or EBP, but not both.
- The following instructions are equivalent:
```
            add ax, Table[ bx ]
            add ax, [ Table + bx ]
            add ax, Table + [ bx ]
            add ax, [ bx ] + Table
```
Indexing With Scaling: Base + Register Offset * Scaling Factor
- Operand field contains base address.
- Useful for array calculations where size of component is multiple bytes long.
Stack Addressing: PUSH and POP, a variant of register indirect with auto-increment/decrement using the ESP register implicitly.
Jump relative addressing, EIP + offset
- Operand field contains a displacement.
- Used by near and short jump instructions on the Intel 80x86. see also: Addressing Modes

Effective address calculation times: