Microprocessor Based
Systems
Lecture No 17 JMP and LOOP
Instructions
By Nasir Mahmood
This Lecture
JMP and LOOP Instructions
JMP Instruction
LOOP Instruction
LOOP Example
Summing an Integer Array
Copying a String
Book Reading “Assembly Language for x86 Processors” 6th Edition
By Kip R. Irvine
Section 4.5
JMP Instruction
• JMP is an unconditional jump to a label that is usually within
the same procedure.
• Syntax: JMP destination
• Logic: EIP ← destination
• Example:
top:
.
.
jmp top
A jump outside the current procedure must be to a special type of label called
a global label
3
LOOP Instruction
• The LOOP instruction creates a counting loop
• Syntax: LOOP destination
• Logic:
• ECX ← ECX – 1
• if ECX != 0, jump to destination
• Implementation:
• The assembler calculates the distance, in bytes, between
the offset of the following instruction and the offset of the
target label. It is called the relative offset.
• The relative offset is added to EIP.
4
LOOP Example
The following loop calculates the sum of the integers
5 + 4 + 3 +2 + 1:
offset machine code source code
00000000 66 B8 0000 mov ax,0
00000004 B9 00000005 mov ecx,5
00000009 66 03 C1 L1: add ax,cx
0000000C E2 FB loop L1
0000000E
When LOOP is assembled, the current location = 0000000E (offset of the next
instruction). –5 (FBh) is added to the the current location, causing a jump
to location 00000009:
00000009 ← 0000000E + FB
5
Your turn . . .
If the relative offset is encoded in a single signed byte,
(a) what is the largest possible backward jump?
(b) what is the largest possible forward jump?
(a) -128
(b) +127
6
Your turn . . .
mov ax,6
mov ecx,4
What will be the final value of AX? L1:
inc ax
10 loop L1
mov ecx,0
How many times will the loop X2:
execute? inc ax
4,294,967,296= loop X2
2^32
7
Nested Loop
If you need to code a loop within a loop, you must save the
outer loop counter's ECX value. In the following example,
the outer loop executes 100 times, and the inner loop 20
times.
.data
count DWORD ?
.code
mov ecx,100 ; set outer loop count
L1:
mov count,ecx ; save outer loop count
mov ecx,20 ; set inner loop count
L2: .
.
loop L2 ; repeat the inner loop
mov ecx,count ; restore outer loop count
loop L1 ; repeat the outer loop
8
Summing an Integer Array
The following code calculates the sum of an array of 16-bit
integers.
.data
intarray WORD 100h,200h,300h,400h
.code
mov edi,OFFSET intarray ; address of intarray
mov ecx,LENGTHOF intarray ; loop counter
mov ax,0 ; zero the accumulator
L1:
add ax,[edi] ; add an integer
add edi,TYPE intarray ; point to next integer
loop L1 ; repeat until ECX = 0
9
Your turn . . .
What changes would you make to the
program on the previous slide if you
were summing a doubleword array?
10
Copying a String
The following code copies a string from source to target:
.data
source BYTE "This is the source string",0 good use of
target BYTE SIZEOF source DUP(0) SIZEOF
.code
mov esi,0 ; index register
mov ecx,SIZEOF source ; loop counter
L1:
mov al,source[esi] ; get char from source
mov target[esi],al ; store it in the target
inc esi ; move to next character
loop L1 ; repeat for entire string
11
THE END
