Why Read This Book

You should read this book if you need a clear, example-driven introduction to ARM assembly and the ARM programmer's model across legacy ARM7 and modern Cortex cores. It walks you through core instruction sets, exception handling, IEEE-754 floating-point basics, and shows how to assemble/debug code with common toolchains so you can write and integrate hand-optimized assembly in real embedded projects.

Who Will Benefit

Firmware engineers and students who write low-level code or need to understand the ARM instruction set and ABI for ARM7 and Cortex-A/R/M processors.

Level: Intermediate — Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with C programming, binary/hex number systems, and fundamental CPU concepts (registers, memory, stack).

Key Takeaways

• Write, assemble, and debug ARM and Thumb assembly programs for ARM7 and Cortex processors
• Understand the ARM programmer's model: registers, modes, flags, and calling conventions
• Handle exceptions, interrupts, and supervisor modes across different ARM cores
• Program and reason about IEEE-754 floating-point operations and VFP usage
• Use Keil MDK-ARM and TI Code Composer Studio to build and debug assembly/C mixed projects
• Interface assembly routines with C and apply common low-level optimization techniques

Topics Covered

1. Introduction to ARM architectures and development tools
2. Binary data representation and basics of assembly language
3. ARM7TDMI programmer's model and core instruction set
4. Data processing, addressing modes, and memory access
5. Branching, condition codes, and control flow
6. Subroutines, stacks, and calling conventions (assembly/C interface)
7. Exceptions, interrupts, and processor modes
8. Thumb and Thumb-2 instruction set overview
9. Cortex-A, Cortex-R, and Cortex-M differences (programmer's model)
10. Floating-point and IEEE-754 programming (VFP basics)
11. Practical examples, debugging techniques, and toolchain usage (Keil, TI CCS)
12. Appendices: instruction reference and assembler/linker notes

Languages, Platforms & Tools

How It Compares

Less system-level than Sloss et al.'s ARM System Developer's Guide and more focused on assembly than Joseph Yiu's Cortex-M guides; Hohl is a concise, assembly-first complement to those titles.