A Beginners

guide to
Assembly
By Rishiraj , Varun and Shreyas

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.out file on Linux
.exe on Windows

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Our
Focus

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Prominent ISAs

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An intriguing Example!

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Some Basics
● % - indicates register names. Example : %rbp

● $ - indicates constants Example : $100

● Accessing register values:

○ %rbp : Access value stored in register rbp

○ (%rbp) : Treat value stored in register rbp as a pointer. Access

the value stored at address pointed by the pointer. Basically *rbp

○ 4(%rbp) : Access value stored at address which is 4 bytes after

the address stored in rbp. Basically *(rbp + 4)
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An intriguing Example!

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An intriguing Example!

For each function call, new space is created on the stack to store
local variables and other data. This is known as a stack frame. To
accomplish this, you will need to write some code at the beginning
and end of each function to create and destroy the stack frame
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An intriguing Example!

rbp is the frame pointer. In our code, it gets a snapshot of the stack
pointer (rsp) so that when rsp is changed, local variables and
function parameters are still accessible from a constant offset from
rbp.
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An intriguing Example!

move immediate value 3000 to (%rbp-8)

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An intriguing Example!

add immediate value 3 to (%rbp-8)

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An intriguing Example!

Move immediate value 100 to (%rbp-4)

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An intriguing Example!

Move (%rbp-4) to auxiliary register

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An intriguing Example!

Pop the base pointer to restore state

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An intriguing Example!

The calling convention dictates that a function’s return value is stored in

%eax, so the above instruction sets us up to return y at the end of our
function.
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Operation Suffixes

● b = byte (8 bit)
● s = single (32-bit floating point)
● w = word (16 bit)
● l = long (32 bit integer or 64-bit floating point)
● q = quad (64 bit)
● t = ten bytes (80-bit floating point)

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How to get assembly code?
Two ways:

● While Compiling
○ Use -S flag with gcc. WIll create a .s file
containing assembly

● Using Binary
○ Use objdump. Will show the assembly in terminal.

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Understanding the output
● The output will have assembly, but there is more information!
● You will see lots of Directives like:
○ .file
○ .text
○ .global name

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Understanding the output
● The output will have assembly, but there is more information also!.
● You will see lots of Directives like:
○ .file
○ .text
○ .global name

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x86 Register Set

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x86 Register Set : A few more

● Registers starting with “r”

○ Same as “e” registers but 64 bits wide

● EIP : The Instruction Pointer or the Program Counter

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An Example with Loops!

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System Calls in Assembly
kernel:
int 80h ; //Call kernel
ret

open:
push dword mode
push dword flags
push dword path
mov eax, 5
call kernel
add esp, byte 12
ret

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System Calls in Assembly
kernel:
int 80h ; //Call kernel
ret

open:
push dword mode
push dword flags
push dword path
mov eax, 5 Syscall Number
call kernel
add esp, byte 12
ret

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A bit different!

A simple fork program

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Embedding Assembly in C

__asm__( “instruction 1”, “instruction 2”, ...)

Example:

__asm__(
"movl %edx, %eax\n\t"
"addl $2, %eax\n\t"
);
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Embedding Assembly in C

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Where will I use assembly?

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Where will I use assembly?

● To write Compilers and Device Drivers

● To write viruses and for malware analysis

● Used while programming Real Time Embedded systems

● Implementing Locks for Concurrency.

We will cover this in the third module of the course!

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References

● Chapter 11. x86 Assembly Language Programming, FreeBSD,

[Link]

● Easy x86-64, [Link]

● Introduction to the GNU/Linux assembler and linker for Intel Pentium processors,
[Link]

● Is there a way to insert assembly code into C?,

[Link]
o-c

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