Mnemonics

Mnemonics are predefined assembly-language names for machine instructions, pseudo-ops, directives, and data allocation statements. Mnemonics are not case-sensitive.

Machine Instruction Mnemonics

Machine instruction mnemonics specify the operation to be performed. For example, br is the mnemonic for the branch predict instruction. Some instruction mnemonics include suffixes and optional completers that indicate variations on the basic operation. The suffixes and completers are separated from the basic mnemonic by a period (.). For example, the instructions br.call (branch call), and br.ret (branch return) include suffixes, and are variations of the basic branch (br) instruction.

In this manual, completers are italicized to distinguish them from the instruction mnemonic suffixes. For example, in the instruction brp.ret.sptk.imp b0,L, the optional completers appear in italics to set them apart from the .ret suffix. For a full description of the instructions, see the Intel® Itanium(TM) Architecture Software Developer’s Manual.

Pseudo-op Mnemonics

Pseudo-op mnemonics represent assembler instructions that alias machine instructions. They are equivalent to instruction mnemonics and are provided for the convenience of the programmer. See Pseudo-ops section for a list of the assembler pseudo-ops.

The following is an example of a pseudo-op:

mov r5=2

The assembler translates this pseudo-op into the equivalent machine instruction:

add1 r5=2,r0

For more details about the pseudo-ops, see the Intel® Itanium(TM) Architecture Software Developer’s Manual.

Directive Mnemonics

Directives are assembler instructions to the assembler during the assembly process; they do not produce executable code. To distinguish them from other instructions, directive mnemonics begin with a period (.).

The following sections, Program Structure through Annotations, describe the assembler directives and explain how to use them.

Data Allocation Mnemonics

Data allocation mnenonics specify the types of data objects assembled in data allocation statements. See Data Allocation for a list of these mnemonics. Data allocation statements are used to allocate initialized memory areas.