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Assembly languages

Started by Ajare Apr 17, 2005 at 4:41 PM 6 replies 1.2k views
Original Post
Ajare
Ajare
About ten years ago I was doing asm coding, and I've decided to take it up again - more as an intellectual exercise than anything - but I'm somewhat confused as to which instruction set to use. I realised that I really know bugger all about this. So, can someone recommend one for Win32 development which works on all the major chipsets? When I look at asm code nowadays, I see loads of instructions that I don't recognise. Or should I just stick with x86 (which is what I did before)?
Nietsnie
Nietsnie
x86 is the only one that works on most modern chipsets. If your wondering what to use to develop, I have used MASM and it works great, although supposedly it is buggy.
Genjix
Genjix
AT&T gas!
kdogg
kdogg
x86 is still the way to go. There are new instructions that can optimize your code for specific CPU's if you care to read up on them. and i'm a nasm guy.
bytecoder
bytecoder
x86 is the major instruction set, although x86_64 (for 64 bit processors--e.g. amd64) is starting to gain popularity.
nmi
nmi
First some links to assemblers:
nasm
yasm
fasm

But my favourite one is the buildin assembler of the GCC. This way you can inline your assembler functions and you can use the automatic register allocation of the assembler. It only takes some time to get used to AT&T syntax ;-)

Last but not least a hint:
Be VERY conservative in using assembly. Only use it where it is really required. Usually this is the case when accessing hardware or when you want to use special cpu instructions (like RDTSC).
mnansgar
mnansgar
To get your feet wet, I also recommend using the inline assembler that comes with Visual C++ or with gcc (although that one's a bit more difficult imo) to get started learning the instructions.
h20, member of WFG 0 A.D.

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