Design Thinking Behind Assembly Language

What you'll learn
Understand the CPU architecture of AVR microcontrollers
Explore the design thinking behind the Assembly instructions for AVR microcontrollers
Get familiar with some AVR Assembly instructions
Write a simple Assembly code to turn on an LED
Requirements
Basic understanding on general-purpose programming and electronics
Description
Assembly language stands as a fundamental tool in the arsenal of hardware designers. While there are numerous resources for mastering its usage, there is a gap in resources that delve into the underlying design principles that govern Assembly language. This course bridges that gap by showing you how Assembly language interfaces with hardware architecture.Our journey starts with a deep dive into the positioning of Assembly language within the paradigm of programming languages. We highlight its unique advantages, notably its ability in facilitating low-level hardware manipulations.Subsequently, attention turns towards understanding the architecture of an AVR processor. Specifically, we will be using the architecture of the ATmega328P microcontroller as it is a simple, widely used microcontroller that appears in Arduino Uno as well. Even though we are using AVR architecture in this course, the principles you learn are readily transferable to other processor architectures.Armed with insights into processor architectures, we will design machine codes to execute a small set of primitive instructions, like addition, subtraction and logical AND operation. This forms the core idea of this course, explaining how Assembly language serves as an interface for hardware programming.Finally, we will explore some Assembly instructions specific to the ATmega328P processor, illustrating the practical application of the concepts we explored.
Overview
Section 1: Introduction
Lecture 1 Introduction
Lecture 2 Outline
Lecture 3 Introduction to Assembly
Section 2: Processor Architecture
Lecture 4 Microcontroller Overview
Lecture 5 Processor Block Diagram
Lecture 6 Processor Registers
Lecture 7 ATmega328P Architecture
Lecture 8 Flash Program Memory
Lecture 9 Special Registers
Lecture 10 Working Registers
Lecture 11 Program Memory
Lecture 12 RAM
Section 3: Design of Assembly Instructions
Lecture 13 Overview of Simplified Scenario
Lecture 14 Building Assembly Instructions
Lecture 15 Complete Design Flow
Section 4: Explanation of Selected Instructions
Lecture 16 Overview
Lecture 17 INC - Increment
Lecture 18 DEC - Decrement
Lecture 19 COM - Complement
Lecture 20 MOV - Move
Lecture 21 LDI - Load Immediate
Lecture 22 ADD - Add without Carry
Lecture 23 AND - Logical AND Operation
Section 5: Sample Assembly Codes
Lecture 24 Overview
Lecture 25 Turn on an LED
Lecture 26 Blink an LED
Lecture 27 Conclusion
Beginners to embedded system design,Beginners to Assembly language
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