Intel 8080 Program Counter Jumps, Subroutines and the Stack, Instruction Register and Decoder

registers eliminates the need to "shuffle" intermediate re- sults back and forth between memory and the accumulator, thus improving processing speed and efficiency.

Program Counter (Jumps, Subroutines and the Stack):

The instructions that make up a program are stored in the system's memory. The central processor references the contents of memory, in order to determine what action is appropriate. This means that the processor must know which location contains the next instruction.

Each of the locations in memory is numbered, to dis- tinguish it from all other locations in memory. The number which identifies a memory location is called its Address.

The processor maintains a counter which contains the address of the next program instruction. This register is called the Program Counter. The processor updates the pro- gram counter by adding "1" to the counter each time it fetches an instruction, so that the program counter is always current (pointing to the next instruction).

The programmer therefore stores his instructions in numerically adjacent addresses, so that the lower addresses contain the first instructions to be executed and the higher addresses contain later instructions. The only time the pro- grammer may violate this sequential rule is when an instruc- tion in one section of memory is a Jump instruction to another section of memory.

A jump instruction contains the address of the instruc- tion which is to follow it. The next instruction may be stored in any memory location, as long as the programmed jump specifies the correct address. During the execution of a jump instruction, the processor replaces the contents of its program counter with the address embodied in the Jump. Thus, the logical continuity of the program is ma.intained.

A special kind of program jump occurs when the stored program "Calls" a subroutine. In this kind of jump, the pro- cessor is required to "remember" the contents of the pro- gram counter at the time that the jump occurs. This enables the processor to resume execution of the main program when it is finished with the last instruction of the subroutine.

A Subroutine is a program within a program. Usually it is a general-purpose set of instructions that must be exe- cuted repeatedly in the course of a main program. Routines which calculate the square, the sine, or the logarithm of a program variable are good examples of functions often written as subroutines. Other examples might be programs designed for inputting or outputting data to a particular peripheral device.

The processor has a special way of handling sub- routines, in order to insure an orderly return to the main program. When the processor receives a Call instruction, it increments the Program Counter and stores the counter's contents in a reserved memory area known as the Stack. The Stack thus saves the address of the instruction to be executed after the subroutine is completed. Then the pro-

cessor loads the address specified in the Call into its Pro- gram Counter. The next instruction fetched will therefore be the first step of the subroutine.

The last instruction in any subroutine is a Return. Such an instruction need specify no address. When the processor fetches a Return instruction, it simply replaces the current contents of the Program Counter with the address on the top of the stack. This causes the processor to resume execu- tion of the calling program at the point immediately foUow- ing the original Call Instruction.

Subroutines are often Nested; that is, one subroutine will sometimes call a second subroutine. The second may call a third, and so on. This is perfectly acceptable, as long as the processor has enough capacity to store the necessary return addresses, and the logical provision for doing so. In other words, the maximum depth of nesting is determined by the depth of the stack itself. If the stack has space for storing three return addresses, then three levels of subrou- tines may be accommodated.

Processors have different ways of maintaining stacks. Some have facilities for the storage of return addresses built into the processor itself. Other processors use a reserved area of external memory as the stack and simply maintain a Pointer register which contains the address of the most recent stack entry. The external stack allows virtually un- limited subroutine nesting. In addition, if the processor pro- vides instructions that cause the contents of the accumulator and other general purpose registers to be "pushed" onto the stack or "popped" off the stack via the address stored in the stack pointer, multi-level interrupt processing (described later in this chapter) is possible. The status of the processor (i.e., the contents of all the registers) can be saved in the stack when an interrupt is accepted and then restored after the interrupt has been serviced. This ability to save the pro- cessor's status at any given time is possible even if an inter- rupt service routine, itself, is interrupted.

Instruction Register and Decoder:

Every computer has a Word Length that is characteris- tic of that machine. A computer's word length is usually determined by the size of its internal storage elements and interconnecting paths (referred to as Busses); for example, a computer whose registers and busses can store and trans- fer a bits of information has a characteristic word length of 8-bits and is referred to as an a-bit parallel processor. An eight-bit parallel processor generally finds it most efficient to deal with eight-bit binary fields, and the memory asso- ciated with such a processor is therefore organized to store eight bits in each addressable memory location. Data and instructions are stored in memory as eight-bit binary num- bers, or as numbers that are integral multiples of eight bits:

16bits, 24 bits, and so on. This characteristic eight-bit field is often referred to as a Byte.

Each operation that the processor can perform is identified by a unique byte of data known as an Instruction

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