Microprocessors Lecture 2

Revision/summary
The main components of a small computer system are:MEMORY
- Stores the program and data required by the program
INTERFACES - Communicate with the outside world
PROCESSOR - Carries out the program instructions one at a time
All data and instructions in any computer system are stored in binary. If they appear in any other form then a
translation must have been carried out.
The meaning of a binary number depends entirely on how it is used, or on its context. E.g. 10000110 is clearly a
binary number which can be translated into 86 in hexadecimal notation. If it is part of an 6809 program and is
executed as an instruction then it would have the effect of 'Loading accumulator A using immediate addressing'. If it
is used as data in unsigned arithmetic then it has the value 134 in decimal. If it is used in twos complement
arithmetic, however, it has the value -122. Its negative because the most significant bit is a 1. If it sent to a vdu then
it will be interpretted as an ASCII character and the letter N will be displayed. Alternatively it might be in the
address part of an instruction and refer to a memory location. It might be sent to an interface connected to a pelican
crossing and result in the green traffic lights being turned on, the red 'do not cross, signs being illuminated and the
'WAIT' signs being on.
This is a very important point which many people have difficulty in grasping - that a pattern of 1s and 0s has no
intrinsic meaning it all depends on what you do with it.

MEMORY is a mass of registers where binary data can be stored. Some may be read-only; their contents cannot be
changed, others may be read-write; what is stored can be changed whenever necessary. Every register has an
address, which is also a binary number, by which it can be referenced to distinguish it from other memory registers.
Surprisingly this address may not be unique. As we shall see later a memory register may have several different
addresses. E.g. the register at address 0000 may also have address 4000 and 8000 and C000. What must not happen,
and this is down to the system design, is that two memory registers have the same address otherwise when you read
from that address you don't know which data you're getting.
INTERFACES - also appear as registers in memory but they are not simply passive memory locations where you
always get back what was stored in them. They are connected to external devices so when you store a binary value
in memory location FE00 for example, if that address is an interface to a set of LEDS, then the stored value will
cause certain LEDs to be turned on and others to be turned off. When you read data from FE01, if that is an interface
connected to a set of switches than the data is not what has been previously stored in that location but the setting on
each of the switches. These days most interface devices are programmable which means they can perform a variety
of functions. This makes the devices more flexible and means that the same interface device can be used in a wide
range of applications. In order to customize the interface for one particular application it will frequently need to be
set up by storing values in control registers. These again appear as memory registers.
The PROCESSOR - is obviously the most important part of the system and is where all the instructions are carried
out. It takes the instructions one at a time, normally in the order in which they are stored in memory, and executes
them. Generally speaking there are three groups of instructions

Data Movement (or Memory Reference) - These instructions move data from one register to another,
usually from memory registers to registers inside the processor and vice versa. E.g 'Load accumulator A
with the contents of memory register 002E'.

Arithmetic & Logical - These operate on data usually already in processor registers to perform arithmetic
operations such as addition or logical operations such as shifting one bit to the left.

Program Control (Jump and Branch) - These alter the program flow from the normal one instruction after
another in the sequence stored in memory. E.g Jump to the instruction in memory register 201A. Often
these are conditional so that program loops can be created. E.g. 'Go back 8 instructions if the result of the
last arithmetic instruction was not zero'.

Early computers stuck fairly rigidly to these three groups but more modern processors, like the 6809, blur the
distinctions by having instructions which combine two operations into a single instruction like 'Add the contents of
memory register 201A to accumulator B'. This is both data movement and arithmetic in one instruction.

Registers
In order to achieve this the processor has a number of internal registers

Data Registers - These are registers where data can be manipulated by the arithmetic and logical
instructions. Operations which are carried out on these registers are usually fast because they do not require
reference to data held in external memory registers. The 6809 has only two of these which are called
Accumulator A and Accumulator B. Since the 6809 can only perform arithmetic operations on 8 bits at one
time (it has an 8 bit ALU) these registers can only store 8 bits. All memory registers also store 8 bit data.
More recent processors have many more data registers, for example the 68000 has 16.

Address Registers - These hold addresses for use in data movement instructions. Addresses in these
registers can also be manipulated e.g. one added to them so that a table can be stepped through. The 6809
has two of these called Index Register X and Index Register Y. In order to enable a reasonable amount of
memory to be addressed all addresses are 16 bits. It follows that these address registers must be 16 bits. The
68000 has 16 address registers.

Program Counter - This register keeps track of where the processor is in a program. It stores the address of
the next instruction which is to be executed. Normally this is stepped up by one automatically as each
instruction is carried out. An instruction which causes a jump to a different part of the program obviously
modifies this process and operates directly on the program counter. Since this register stores an address it
must be a 16 bit register in the 6809.

Instruction Register - This holds the binary instruction word while it is being executed in the processor.'
Therefore the first stage in carrying out an instruction is to move the instruction from the appropriate
memory register (the PC says which one) into the instruction register. Different parts of this instruction
word then indicate different actions. For example in an arithmetic instruction four bits control the ALU to
set it into the correct mode for add, subtract, shift etc.

Temporary registers - In addition the processor requires various temporary registers to hold transitory data
while an instruction is being carried out. For example an instruction which 'Loads data from memory
register 001B into accumulator A' must read the part of the instruction which defines the address which
must then be held somewhere so that it can be used to fetch the appropriate data from memory. A temporary
register is used for that purpose. An instruction which exchanges the contents of accumulators A and B also
needs to store the value in one of the accumulators so that it is not lost in the exchange.
(A)
->
(B)
->
(temp) ->

(temp)
(A)
(B)

Other registers - We will see in due course that other registers are necessary to make the processor more
versatile. We will deal with them as we come to them.

User-programmable registers in the M6809

Buses
These are data paths which enable data to be transferred from one device to another in the system. In a computer
system these are normally parallel in nature i.e. to transfer 8 bits of data we need 8 wires (or 8 tracks on a PCB)
connected to each device. There are two such buses which are necessary.

Address Bus - Connects the processor to memory devices and interfaces. It is used by the processor to
indicate which memory register (or interface register) is the source or destination for data. In 6809 it has to
be 16 bits. Since the address is always supplied by the processor (except in DMA) the processor always
outputs data on this bus and the other devices always input or receive data.

Data Bus - This is used to transfer data between the processor and memory registers and interface registers.
The source of data may be the processor or it may be a memory register or an interface register: To avoid
damaging the devices or scrambling data only one device may place data on the bus at a time. This will be
either the processor or the device addressed by the binary pattern currently on the address bus. Normal
logic gates have only two output states high (1) or low (0). Gates connected to a bus of this type must have
a third high-impedence state when they are effectively not outputting anything but allowing another device
to output data. The data bus in a 6809 system has 8 bits.