8086 Microprocessor Pdf Notes

[Eliz Mettert]

The8086 microprocessor is an 8-bit/16-bit microprocessor designed by Intel in the late 1970s. It is the first member of the x86 family of microprocessors, which includes many popular CPUs used in personal computers.

The architecture of the 8086 microprocessor is based on a complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture, which means that it supports a wide range of instructions, many of which can perform multiple operations in a single instruction. The 8086 microprocessor has a 20-bit address bus, which can address up to 1 MB of memory, and a 16-bit data bus, which can transfer data between the microprocessor and memory or I/O devices.

The 8086 microprocessor has a segmented memory architecture, which means that memory is divided into segments that are addressed using both a segment register and an offset. The segment register points to the start of a segment, while the offset specifies the location of a specific byte within the segment. This allows the 8086 microprocessor to access large amounts of memory, while still using a 16-bit data bus.

The 8086 microprocessor has two main execution units: the execution unit (EU) and the bus interface unit (BIU). The BIU is responsible for fetching instructions from memory and decoding them, while the EU executes the instructions. The BIU also manages data transfer between the microprocessor and memory or I/O devices.

The 8086 microprocessor has a rich set of registers, including general-purpose registers, segment registers, and special registers. The general-purpose registers can be used to store data and perform arithmetic and logical operations, while the segment registers are used to address memory segments. The special registers include the flags register, which stores status information about the result of the previous operation, and the instruction pointer (IP), which points to the next instruction to be executed.

The size of the internal registers(present within the chip) indicates how much information the processor can operate on at a time (in this case 16-bit registers) and how it moves data around internally within the chip, sometimes also referred to as the internal data bus.

The Prefetch Unit in the 8086 microprocessor is a component responsible for fetching instructions from memory and storing them in a queue. The prefetch unit allows the 8086 to perform multiple instruction fetches in parallel, improving the overall performance of the microprocessor.

The prefetch unit consists of a buffer and a program counter that are used to fetch instructions from memory. The buffer stores the instructions that have been fetched and the program counter keeps track of the memory location of the next instruction to be fetched. The prefetch unit fetches several instructions ahead of the current instruction, allowing the 8086 to execute instructions from the buffer rather than from memory.

This parallel processing of instruction fetches helps to reduce the wait time for memory access, as the 8086 can continue to execute instructions from the buffer while it waits for memory access to complete. This results in improved overall performance, as the 8086 is able to execute more instructions in a given amount of time.

The prefetch unit is an important component of the 8086 microprocessor, as it allows the microprocessor to work more efficiently and perform more instructions in a given amount of time. This improved performance helps to ensure that the 8086 remains competitive in its performance and capabilities, even as technology continues to advance.

The Decode Unit works in parallel with the Prefetch Unit, which fetches instructions from memory and stores them in a queue. The Decode Unit reads the instructions from the queue and translates them into micro-operations that can be executed by the microprocessor.

The Decode Unit is an important component of the 8086 microprocessor, as it allows the microprocessor to execute instructions efficiently and accurately. The decode unit ensures that the microprocessor can execute complex instructions, such as jump instructions and loop instructions, by translating them into a series of simple micro-operations.

The Decode Unit is responsible for decoding instructions, performing register-to-register operations, and performing memory-to-register operations. It also decodes conditional jumps, calls, and returns, and performs data transfers between memory and registers.

The Decode Unit helps to improve the performance of the 8086 microprocessor by allowing it to execute instructions quickly and accurately. This improved performance helps to ensure that the 8086 remains competitive in its performance and capabilities, even as technology continues to advance.

The Control Unit in the 8086 microprocessor is a component that manages the overall operation of the microprocessor. The control unit is responsible for controlling the flow of instructions through the microprocessor and coordinating the activities of the other components, including the Decode Unit, Execution Unit, and Prefetch Unit.

The Control Unit acts as the central coordinator for the microprocessor, directing the flow of data and instructions and ensuring that the microprocessor operates correctly. It also monitors the state of the microprocessor, ensuring that the correct sequence of operations is followed.

The Control Unit is an essential component of the 8086 microprocessor, as it allows the microprocessor to operate efficiently and accurately. The control unit ensures that the microprocessor can execute complex instructions, such as jump instructions and loop instructions, by coordinating the activities of the other components.

The Control Unit helps to improve the performance of the 8086 microprocessor by managing the flow of instructions and data through the microprocessor, ensuring that the microprocessor operates correctly and efficiently. This improved performance helps to ensure that the 8086 remains competitive in its performance and capabilities, even as technology continues to advance.

1.Address Bus: The address bus is used to send the memory address of the instruction or data being read or written. The address bus is 16 bits wide, allowing the 8086 to address up to 64 kilobytes of memory.

3.Control Bus: The control bus is used to transfer control signals between the microprocessor and other components in the computer system. The control bus is used to send signals such as read, write, and interrupt requests, and to transfer status information between the microprocessor and other components.

The 8088 was designed at Intel's laboratory in Haifa, Israel, as were a large number of Intel's processors.[9] The 8088 was targeted at economical systems by allowing the use of an eight-bit data path and eight-bit support and peripheral chips; complex circuit boards were still fairly cumbersome and expensive when it was released. The prefetch queue of the 8088 was shortened to four bytes, from the 8086's six bytes, and the prefetch algorithm was slightly modified to adapt to the narrower bus.[a] These modifications of the basic 8086 design were one of the first jobs assigned to Intel's new design office and laboratory in Haifa.

A side effect of the 8088 design, with the slow bus and the small prefetch queue, is that the speed of code execution can be very dependent on instruction order. When programming the 8088, for CPU efficiency, it is vital to interleave long-running instructions with short ones whenever possible. For example, a repeated string operation or a shift by three or more will take long enough to allow time for the 4-byte prefetch queue to completely fill. If short instructions (i.e. ones totaling few bytes) are placed between slower instructions like these, the short ones can execute at full speed out of the queue. If, on the other hand, the slow instructions are executed sequentially, back to back, then after the first of them the bus unit will be forced to idle because the queue will already be full, with the consequence that later more of the faster instructions will suffer fetch delays that might have been avoidable. As some instructions, such as single-bit-position shifts and rotates, take literally 4 times as long to fetch as to execute,[c] the overall effect can be a slowdown by a factor of two or more. If those code segments are the bodies of loops, the difference in execution time may be very noticeable on the human timescale.

The 8088 is also (like the 8086) slow at accessing memory. The same ALU that is used to execute arithmetic and logic instructions is also used to calculate effective addresses. There is a separate adder for adding a shifted segment register to the offset address, but the offset EA itself is always calculated entirely in the main ALU. Furthermore, the loose coupling of the EU and BIU (bus unit) inserts communication overhead between the units, and the four-clock period bus transfer cycle is not particularly streamlined. Contrast this with the two-clock period bus cycle of the 6502 CPU and the 80286's three-clock period bus cycle with pipelining down to two cycles for most transfers. Most 8088 instructions that can operate on either registers or memory, including common ALU and data-movement operations, are at least four times slower for memory operands than for only register operands. Therefore, efficient 8088 (and 8086) programs avoid repeated access of memory operands when possible, loading operands from memory into registers to work with them there and storing back only the finished results. The relatively large general register set of the 8088 compared to its contemporaries assists this strategy. When there are not enough registers for all variables that are needed at once, saving registers by pushing them onto the stack and popping them back to restore them is the fastest way to use memory to augment the registers, as the stack PUSH and POP instructions are the fastest memory operations. The same is probably not true on the 80286 and later; they have dedicated address ALUs and perform memory accesses much faster than the 8088 and 8086.

3a8082e126