About This Book

This book provides information on the assembler language program as implemented by the AIX Version 4 assembler. Topics covered include assembler operation, instructions, pseudo-operations, and extended mnemonics for the POWER and PowerPC architectures and their supported processors.

Note: The information in this book can also be found on the AIX Version 4.3 Extended Documentation CD. This online documentation is designed to be viewed with an HTML version 3.2 compatible web browser.

Who Should Use This Book

This book is intended for experienced assembler language programmers. To use this book effectively, you should be familiar with AIX or UNIX System V commands, assembler instructions, pseudo-ops, and processor register usage.

Before You Begin

This book does not teach readers how to program or operate their system. Furthermore, this book contains little or no information about:

Any commands, system calls, subroutines, or programming aids that are part of the local operating system, except for limited information on the as, ld, and cc commands.
Any hardware features. This book does give brief explanations about some processor registers and their use.
Details regarding privileged instructions.

How to Use This Book

Overview of Contents

This book contains the following chapters and appendixes:

Chapter 1, "Assembler Overview," provides a brief overview of the AIX Version 4 assembler and its features.
Chapter 2, "Processing and Storage," provides an overview and comparison of the POWER and PowerPC architectures, and discusses the basic functions for the POWER and PowerPC instruction sets.
Chapter 3, "Syntax and Semantics," discusses the syntax and semantics of the assembler language.
Chapter 4, "Addressing," discusses addressing modes.
Chapter 5, "Assembling and Linking a Program," discusses assembling and linking a program, assembler passes, assembler listings, symbol cross-references, subroutine linkage conventions, and the Table of Contents (TOC).
Chapter 6, "Extended Instruction Mnemonics," discusses extended mnemonics for POWER and PowerPC.
Chapter 7, "Migrating Source Programs," discusses migrating POWER and PowerPC source programs.
Chapter 8, "Instruction Set," provides reference information for POWER and PowerPC instructions.
Chapter 9, "Pseudo-ops," provides an overview of assembler pseudo-ops and reference information for all pseudo-ops.
Appendix A, "Messages," lists and explains error and warning messages generated by the assembler.
Appendix B through Appendix G contain tables providing summary information about the instruction set.

Highlighting

The following highlighting conventions are used in this book:

Bold	Identifies commands, subroutines, keywords, files, structures, directories, and other items whose names are predefined by the system.
Italics	Identifies parameters whose actual names or values are to be supplied by the user.
`Monospace`	Identifies examples of specific data values, examples of text similar to what you might see displayed, examples of portions of program code similar to what you might write as a programmer, messages from the system, or information you should actually type.

ISO 9000

ISO 9000 registered quality systems were used in the development and manufacturing of this product.

Related Publications

The following books contain information about or related to the assembler:

AIX and Related Products Documentation Overview, order number SC23-2456.
AIX Version 4.3 Commands Reference, order number SBOF-1877.
AIX Version 4.3 General Programming Concepts: Writing and Debugging Programs, order number SC23-4128.
PowerPC Architecture, order number SR28-5124.
PowerPC 603 RISC Microprocessor User's Manual, MPR603UMU-01. IBM Microelectronics, Mail Stop A25/862-1, PowerPC Marketing, 1000 River Street, Essex Junction, VT 05452. Telephone 1-800-769-3772.

Ordering Publications

You can order publications from your sales representative or from your point of sale.

If you received a printed copy of AIX and Related Products Documentation Overview with your system, use that book for information on related publications and for instructions on ordering them.

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