Assignment
Title: Addressing
Name: Zain Murtaza
Subject: BS Computer Science
Course: Computer Organization and
Assembly Language
Semester: 4th
Submitted: Sir Mudassar Munir
Superior group of college Sheikupura
Adressing Modes and Instruction Cycle
The operation field of an instruction specifies the operation to be performed. This operation will
be executed on some data which is stored in computer registers or the main memory. The way
any operand is selected during the program execution is dependent on the addressing mode of the
instruction. The purpose of using addressing modes is as follows:
1. To give the programming versatility to the user.
2. To reduce the number of bits in addressing field of instruction.
Types of Addressing Modes
Below we have discussed different types of addressing modes one by one:
Immediate Mode
In this mode, the operand is specified in the instruction itself. An immediate mode instruction
has an operand field rather than the address field.
For example: ADD 7, which says Add 7 to contents of accumulator. 7 is the operand he
Register Mode
In this mode the operand is stored in the register and this register is present in CPU. The
instruction has the address of the Register where the operand is stored.
Advantages
Shorter instructions and faster instruction fetch.
Faster memory access to the operand(s)
Disadvantages
Very limited address space
Using multiple registers helps performance but it complicates the instructions.
Register Indirect Mode
In this mode, the instruction specifies the register whose contents give us the address of operand
which is in memory. Thus, the register contains the address of operand rather than the operand
itself.
Auto Increment/Decrement Mode
In this the register is incremented or decremented after or before its value is used.
Direct Addressing Mode
In this mode, effective address of operand is present in instruction itself.
Single memory reference to access data.
No additional calculations to find the effective address of the operand.
For Example: ADD R1, 4000 - In this the 4000 is effective address of operand.
NOTE: Effective Address is the location where operand is present.
Indirect Addressing Mode
In this, the address field of instruction gives the address where the effective address is stored in
memory. This slows down the execution, as this includes multiple memory lookups to find the
operand.
Displacement Addressing Mode
In this the contents of the indexed register is added to the Address part of the instruction, to
obtain the effective address of operand.
EA = A + (R), In this the address field holds two values, A(which is the base value) and R(that
holds the displacement), or vice versa.
Relative Addressing Mode
It is a version of Displacement addressing mode.
In this the contents of PC(Program Counter) is added to address part of instruction to obtain the
effective address.
EA = A + (PC), where EA is effective address and PC is program counter.
The operand is A cells away from the current cell(the one pointed to by PC)
Base Register Addressing Mode
It is again a version of Displacement addressing mode. This can be defined as EA = A + (R),
where A is displacement and R holds pointer to base address.
Stack Addressing Mode
In this mode, operand is at the top of the stack. For example: ADD, this instruction will POP top
two items from the stack, add them, and will then PUSH the result to the top of the stack.
Instruction Cycle
An instruction cycle, also known as fetch-decode-execute cycle is the basic operational process
of a computer. This process is repeated continuously by CPU from boot up to shut down of
computer.
Following are the steps that occur during an instruction cycle:
1. Fetch the Instruction
The instruction is fetched from memory address that is stored in PC(Program Counter) and
stored in the instruction register IR. At the end of the fetch operation, PC is incremented by 1 and
it then points to the next instruction to be executed.
2. Decode the Instruction
The instruction in the IR is executed by the decoder.
3. Read the Effective Address
If the instruction has an indirect address, the effective address is read from the memory.
Otherwise operands are directly read in case of immediate operand instruction.
4. Execute the Instruction
The Control Unit passes the information in the form of control signals to the functional unit of
CPU. The result generated is stored in main memory or sent to an output device.
The cycle is then repeated by fetching the next instruction. Thus in this way the instruction cycle
is repeated continuously.
