64-Bit Assembly Quiz

1) In 64-bit mode, how many bytes are always pushed?

                PUSH        12
                PUSH        EAX

2) What happens to the upper 32-bits?

                XOR         EAX, EAX
                MOV         EAX, 0x12345678
                MOV         EAX, 0x80000000

3) How do you set FS or GS values?

4) If FS points to current task record, what's wrong with this instruction?

                MOV         RAX, U64 FS:[TSS_SOME_MEMBER]

5) Which instruction takes more bytes?

                MOV         RAX, U64 [R8]
                MOV         RAX, U64 [R13]

6) Are these the same number of bytes?

                MOV         RAX, 1234
                MOV         R8,  1234
                MOV         EAX, 1234

7) True or False

    a) You can access the lowest byte of RAX.

    b) You can access the lowest byte of ESI.

    c) You can access the second-to-lowest byte of RAX.

    d) You can access the second-to-lowest byte of ESI.

8) How do you call a subroutine at 0x10,0000,0000 from code at 0x00,0010,0000?

9) How much faster is a REL32 call instruction compared to a software interrupt or SYSCALL?

10) How long does an IN or OUT instruction take on a 1GHz machine and on a 3GHz machine?

11) How do you push all 16 regs?

12) Should you put the regs in a TSS?

13) You can have 4K or 4Meg pages in 32-bit mode.  You can have 4K or what size pages in 64-bit mode?

14) On a fresh CPU with an empty TLB, how many memory accesses (page tables) does it take to access one virtual address?

----

ZealOS identity-maps everything, all the time, so the usual convention of upper memory being for kernel does not apply.  It 
uses physical addresses, basically.  It puts all code in the lowest 2-Gig memory range so that it can use the CALL REL32 
instruction, the fastest.   It never changes privilege levels or messes with page tables, once it is up-and-running.

----

ANSWERS:

1) All stack pushes and pops are 64-bits.

2) The upper 32-bits are set to zero.

3) To set FS or GS, you use WRMSR to write a model specific reg.    See IA32_FS_BASE and SET_FS_BASE.

4) Displacement addressing is now RIP relative, so RIP would be added to TSS_SOME_MEMBER.  (Useless)

5) The R13 instruction takes one more byte because it is like REG_RBP in the ModR.

6) The R8 instruction needs a REX byte prefix to specify upper-8 reg.

7) You can access the lowest byte of any reg.  You can access AH but not the second-to-lowest byte of ESI.

8) To call a subroutine farther than 2Gig away, you put the address into RAX, then CALL RAX.

9) CALL REL32 is significantly faster.  See ::/Demo/Lectures/InterruptDemo.CC.

10) IN or OUT instructions happen at a fixed speed based on the original ISA bus clock.

11) PUSHAD is not available for 64-bit mode, so you do it by hand.

12) The TSS is no longer used to hold the task state because there are 16 regs and they are 64-bits, not 32-bits.

13) 64-bit mode has 4K or 2Meg page size.

14) For one access, there are 3-4 levels of page tables plus the location itself.