Addressing Modes

Addressing modes are the ways how architectures specify the address of an object they want to access. In GPR
machines, an addressing mode can specify a constant, a register or a location in memory.

The most common names for addressing modes (names may differ among architectures)
Addressing Example
Meaning When used
modes Instruction
Register Add R4,R3 R4 <- R4 + R3 When a value is in a register
Immediate Add R4, #3 R4 <- R4 + 3 For constants
Displacement Add R4, 100(R1) R4 <- R4 + M[100+R1] Accessing local variables
Register deffered Add R4,(R1) R4 <- R4 + M[R1] Accessing using a pointer or a computed address
Useful in array addressing:
Add R3, (R1 +
Indexed R3 <- R3 + M[R1+R2] R1 - base of array
R2)
R2 - index amount
Direct Add R1, (1001) R1 <- R1 + M[1001] Useful in accessing static data
Memory deferred Add R1, @(R3) R1 <- R1 + M[M[R3]] If R3 is the address of a pointer p, then mode yields *p
Useful for stepping through arrays in a loop.
Auto- R1 <- R1 +M[R2]
Add R1, (R2)+ R2 - start of array
increment R2 <- R2 + d
d - size of an element
Same as autoincrement.
Auto- R2 <-R2-d
Add R1,-(R2) Both can also be used to implement a stack as push and
decrement R1 <- R1 + M[R2]
pop
Add R1, 100(R2) R1<- Used to index arrays. May be applied to any base
Scaled
[R3] R1+M[100+R2+R3*d] addressing mode in some machines.
Notation:
<- - assignment
M - the name for memory:
M[R1] refers to contents of memory location whose address is given by the contents of R1

Immediate and displacement addressing modes dominate addressing mode usage. The major question for
displacement-style addressing mode is that of the range of displacement used. Choosing the displacement field size is
important because it directly affects instruction length. According to measurements taken on the data access on a GPR
architecture using SPEC benchmarks displacement values are widely distributed.

Another important instruction set measurement is the range of values for immediates . Small immediate values are
used most heavily. However, large immediates are sometimes used, most likely in address calculations.

Encoding of Addressing Modes

How the addressing modes of operands are encoded depends on

 the range of addressing modes
the degree of independence between opcodes and modes
For small number of addressing modes or opcode/addressing mode combinations, the addressing mode can be encoded
in opcode.
For a larger number of combinations, typically a separate address specifier is needed for each operand.
The architect has to balance several competing forces when encoding the instruction set:
The desire to have as many registers and addressing modes as possible.
The impact of the size of the register and addressing mode fields on the average instruction size and hence on the
average program size.
A desire to have instructions encode into lengths that are easy to handle in the implementation (multiples of bytes,
fixed-length) with possible sacrificing in average code size.