Hawk, An Example Instructional Architecture

Part of the Computer Architecture Pages
See also the Assembly Language Programming Pages
by Douglas W. Jones
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Department of Computer Science

Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Short Memory Reference Instructions
  3. Memory Reference Instructions
  4. Long Immediate Instructions
  5. Short Immediate Instructions
  6. Three Register Instructions
  7. Two Register Instructions
  8. Branch Instructions
  9. Trap and Interrupt Service
  10. Support for Multiply and Divide
  1. Emulator and Debugger Reference
  2. Instruction Set Summary and Index
Note that all of the assembly language source code used here is formatted for use with the 32-bit version of the machine independent SMAL assembler (version B); the specific opcodes of the Hawk architecture are defined in a special file, hawk.macs, that must be included at the head of each Hawk assembly language program. A Hawk emulator written in C is available for use under various versions of UNIX including Linux. A hello world program is available; this uses the emulator and includes a small but useful standard library.

Abstract

The Hawk computer is a fictional machine that incorporates many features of modern RISC processors without slavish adherance to any particular real machine. The Hawk instruction set is based on a 32 bit word, typical for modern machines, and includes 15 general registers, a modest number by modern standards.

Acknowledgement

The Hawk architecture began as a midterm exam question in my spring 1996 offering of 22C:122, Advanced Computer Architecture at the University of Iowa. The unnamed architecture presented there was the subject of followup questions and discussions that led to the architecture presented here. I first reduced this architecture to workable form for the fall 1996 offering of 22C:18, Computer Organization and Assembly Language Programming; I owe quite a bit to the students in that class for their patience in working the last few bugs out of the emulator.

Original release: Mar. 6, 1996
Revised: Feb. 27, 2002 - BCDGET instruction replaced by EX3ADJ
Revised: Mar. 13, 2002 - SSQADJ, BTRUNC instructions added
Revised: July 25, 2002 - recoded so 0000, FFFF no-op, add ADJUST, MOVESL

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