assembly-riscv

RISC-V Assembly

Purpose

Guide agents through RISC-V assembly programming: RV32/RV64 instruction sets, register naming and calling conventions (psABI), ISA extension naming, inline assembly with GCC/Clang, compressed (RVC) instructions, and QEMU-based simulation with GDB remote debugging.

Triggers

• "How do I write RISC-V assembly?"
• "What are the RISC-V calling convention registers?"
• "How do I use inline asm for RISC-V in C?"
• "What do RISC-V extension letters mean (IMAFD)?"
• "How do I simulate RISC-V with QEMU?"
• "How do I debug RISC-V code with GDB?"

Workflow

1. Register file and calling convention

RISC-V has 32 integer registers (x0–x31) with ABI names:

Register	ABI name	Role	Saved by
x0	zero	Hard-wired zero	—
x1	ra	Return address	Caller
x2	sp	Stack pointer	Callee
x3	gp	Global pointer	—
x4	tp	Thread pointer	—
x5–x7	t0–t2	Temporaries	Caller
x8	s0/fp	Frame pointer	Callee
x9	s1	Saved register	Callee
x10–x11	a0–a1	Arguments / return values	Caller
x12–x17	a2–a7	Arguments	Caller
x18–x27	s2–s11	Saved registers	Callee
x28–x31	t3–t6	Temporaries	Caller

Floating-point registers (F extension): f0–f31 (fa0–fa7 for arguments).

2. Basic instructions

# Arithmetic (R and I type)
add   a0, a1, a2      # a0 = a1 + a2
sub   a0, a1, a2      # a0 = a1 - a2
addi  a0, a1, 42      # a0 = a1 + 42 (immediate)
mul   a0, a1, a2      # a0 = a1 * a2 (M extension)
div   a0, a1, a2      # signed divide (M extension)
rem   a0, a1, a2      # remainder (M extension)

# Logical
and   a0, a1, a2      # bitwise AND
or    a0, a1, a2      # bitwise OR
xor   a0, a1, a2      # bitwise XOR
sll   a0, a1, a2      # shift left logical
srl   a0, a1, a2      # shift right logical (unsigned)
sra   a0, a1, a2      # shift right arithmetic (signed)

# Load / store
lw    a0, 0(sp)       # load word (32-bit)
ld    a0, 0(sp)       # load doubleword (64-bit, RV64)
lh    a0, 4(sp)       # load halfword (sign-extended)
lbu   a0, 8(sp)       # load byte (zero-extended)
sw    a0, 0(sp)       # store word
sd    a0, 0(sp)       # store doubleword (RV64)

# Branches (compare and branch)
beq   a0, a1, label   # branch if equal
bne   a0, a1, label   # branch if not equal
blt   a0, a1, label   # branch if less than (signed)
bltu  a0, a1, label   # branch if less than (unsigned)
bge   a0, a1, label   # branch if ≥ (signed)

# Jumps
j     label           # unconditional jump (pseudoinstruction: jal x0, label)
jal   ra, func        # jump and link (call)
jalr  zero, ra, 0     # jump to ra (return: pseudoinstruction: ret)