Assembly Language Operations
The Current Program Status Register
The Current Program Status Register is a 32-bit wide register used in the ARM architecture to record various pieces of information regarding the state of the program being executed by the processor and the state of the processor. This information is recorded by setting or clearing specific bits in the register.
ARM CPSR format
The top four bits (bits 31, 30, 29, and 28) are the condition code (cc) bits and are of most interest to us. Condition code bits are sometimes referred to as "flags". The lowest 8 bits (bit 7 through to bit 0) store information about the processor's own state. The remaining bits (i.e. bit 27 to bit 8) are currently unused in most ARM processors.
The N bit is the "negative flag" and indicates that a value is negative.
The Z bit is the "zero flag" and is set when an appropriate instruction produces a zero result.
The C bit is the "carry flag" but it can also be used to indicate "borrows" (from subtraction operations) and "extends" (from shift instructions (LINK)).
The V bit is the "overflow flag" which is set if an instruction produces a result that overflows and hence may go beyond the range of numbers that can be represented in 2's complement signed format.
For completeness, the other state bits are:
The I and F bits which determine whether interrupts (such as requests for input/output) are enabled or disabled.
The T bit which indicates whether the processor is in "Thumb" mode, where the processor can execute a subset of the assembly language as 16-bit compact instructions. As Thumb code packs more instructions into the same amount of memory, it is an effective solution to applications where physical memory is at a premium.
The M4 to M0 bits are the mode bits. Application programs normally run in user mode (where the mode bits are 10000). Whenever an interrupt or similar event occurs, the processor switches into one of the alternative modes allowing the software handler greater privileges with regard to memory manipulation.