AARCH64-ASM-class-projects

Six one hour lessons on the basics of ARM Assembly on the Raspberry Pi (appropriate for high-school students).

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Hour 0 - Return values

First we start with a very simple C program...

int main()
{
   return 42;
}

To see the result...

$ echo $?
42

And we write the equivalent in ARM Assembly language...

.section .text                        // Text section for code
.global _start                        // Define the entry point

_start:
   mov x0, #42                       // Set x0 to 42
   mov x8, #93                       // Set x8 to 93 (sys_exit syscall number)
   svc 0                             // Make the syscall

To see the result...

$ echo $?
42

After we get the programming environment set up and discuss some theory, that's it for the first hour.

Topics Covered
Entry Points, Registers, Syscalls, Assembly Syntax, File Sections, Directives, Return values, Data Types

Hour 1 - Hello, World!

In Hour 1 we write Hello, World! in ARM Assembly and introduce loops and function calls. (Note: we print "Hello, World!" one character at at time.)

Topics Covered
Loops, Functions, Strings, Registers, Branching, Conditionals, Stack, Pointers, Memory, Data Types

Hour 2 - ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRZTUVWXYZ

In Hour 2 we write an ARM Assembly program that prints the alphabet. In this lesson we introduce ASCII encoding and the concepts of branching and conditionals.

Topics Covered
Branching, Conditionals, Loops, Strings, ASCII, Data Types

Hour 3 - 0 -> 99

In Hour 3 we write a program that prints the numbers 0 to 99 in ARM Assembly. Here we discuss the difference between the integer value of a number and the printed representation of a number as an ASCII string.

Hour 4 - FizzBuzz

In Hour 4 we write a program that implements the famous FizzBuzz algorithm for values from 1 to 100. This lesson is a bit more challenging than the previous lessons, but it is a great way to learn about branching and conditionals.

Hour 5 - Sorting (asm example not yet working)

In Hour 5 we write a program that sorts and prints an array of integers in ARM Assembly. This one is challenging!

Hour 6 - Leap Year

In Hour 6 we write an ARM assembler program that takes a year as text input from stdin and responds whether or not that year is a leap year.

Useful Links

• ARM Assembly Language Reference
• LINUX SysCall info
• ASCII Table
• GDB TUI Documentation