32/64-Bit 80x86 Assembly Language Architecture [Paperback]

James Leiterman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1598220020 | ISBN-13: 978-1598220025 | Publication Date: August 10, 2005 | Edition: 1

The increasing complexity of programming environments provides a number of opportunities for assembly language programmers. 32/64-Bit 80x86 Assembly Language Architecture attempts to break through that complexity by providing a step-by-step understanding of programming Intel and AMD 80x86 processors in assembly language. This book explains 32-bit and 64-bit 80x86 assembly language programming inclusive of the SIMD (single instruction multiple data) instruction supersets that bring the 80x86 processor into the realm of the supercomputer, gives insight into the FPU (floating-point unit) chip in every Pentium processor, and offers strategies for optimizing code. Learn about: 3DNow! MMX, SSE, SSE-2, SSE-3, AMD64, and EM64T instruction sets, The similarities of and differences between various 80x86 processors, Boolean bit manipulation, Data swizzling, shuffling, and splatting, Integer and floating-point math operations, Branching and branchless coding methods, Coding standards, Debugging functions

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Leiterman is a senior computer engineer who has been developing hardware and software professionally since 1978 and programming video/computer games for 20 years. He has worked for multiple game companies including Midway, LucasArts, Atari, Wild Goose Games, a casino gaming company, and two Internet online game companies and has shipped nine games. He is also the author of Vector Game Math Processors and Learn Vertex and Pixel Shader Programming with DirectX 9.

Product Details

• Paperback: 450 pages
• Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers; 1 edition (August 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598220020
• ISBN-13: 978-1598220025
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,273,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #71 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Assembly Language Programming

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's all there, but be careful, March 24, 2006

By 

G. N. Reeke (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 32/64-Bit 80x86 Assembly Language Architecture (Paperback)

I recommend this book, with caveats. I found all the information I was looking for about Intel/AMD architecure (I was specifically interested in the 64-bit extensions). The charts showing which instructions are implemented on which model processors are a very big plus that probably cannot be found elsewhere. BUT: There are lots of little errors throughout that I could detect because of inconsistencies--I don't know how many more there are that I couldn't detect in material only presented once. Example: pp. 204 & 205 discussion of division, the text has the dividend and divisor reversed from what is shown in the tables. Also, the author tends to spend many pages repeating basic or similar information at great length (for example, treating addition and subtraction separately, repeating all the details) but some more complicated but necessary information is left unsaid (for example: What exactly do the two-stage square root instructions do? What on earth is a partial tangent or a partial arctangent (the discussion makes it seem the latter is just a division operation, which is not likely)? There is a whole chapter entitled "MASM vs NASM vs TASM vs WASM" that really only discusses MASM and certainly gives no useful information on the differences between those assemblers.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Very useful to have on the shelf, but reads like it was written in a big hurry--could have used a lot of editing.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not enough material for a book + very poorly written, March 9, 2006

By 

J Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt - See all my reviews

This review is from: 32/64-Bit 80x86 Assembly Language Architecture (Paperback)

The book is about 500 pages overall, but only about a hundred pages have something readable on them; the rest are opcode tables -- nicely printed, but not terribly instructive. Oh, and the author also takes some space to tell you that he has eight children, and that it's the third book he's written, and that you need to get the other ones, and that he has two brothers, and that his two brothers also write books, and that you'd better get their books too, although they write fiction rather than technical, and so on and so forth, and on, and on, and more donkey diarrhea like that.

OK, back to the essence: by most part the book is a selective reprint of the freely downloadable Intel instruction-set references -- not nearly as detailed, but grouped by function (rather than alphabetically) and with comments/sample code at times. This, especially the grouping, is good, but ultimately does not save the book. Why:

First, a couple of articles' worth of stuff does not make a book -- there's simply not enough original material. Which insufficiency is (second) 'compensated' by padding the book with reference material. Third, and most important: the author has no writing aptitude. If he must write at all, he should team up with a competent technical writer, otherwise there's no hope: this text is disjointed in the highest degree and downright imbecile at times: the guy seems to be oblivious to the fact that words mean something, and that in order to communicate information one has to carefully pick the right ones and assemble them in a meaningful way. For example, BSF, he says, scans for the LSB. Well, the LSB is in position zero and doesn't need to be scanned for! What BSF does is scan in the least-to-most-significant direction for the earliest bit that is set. Which is probably what this dunderbuss thinks he's been saying all along. Now, this is a simple, immediately obvious example (not the worst either: a lot of writing in this book is not simply careless, but downright ungrammatical, incomprehensible). If this is a simple case, what will happen when you get to more esoteric instructions? Go to Intel and download their free books; they're not perfect, but they are decent -- you'll be better off with them.

This is the second book by Leiterman I got; the first one (Vector Game Math Processors) had the same flaws; it's been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years and proved consistently useless. Both books are very attractive visually; the tables of contents appear promising; about one tenth of each book looks like it could contain some value -- but, once you get to it, it's invariably not enough material + lots of padding + piss-poor writing. While I'm at it: the publisher is Wordware, which, as I came to understand now, is a giveaway -- I've not seen one good book from them.

I'm sending this book back.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars In serious need of copy editing and technical editing, February 1, 2007

By 

K. Gregg (Tucson, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 32/64-Bit 80x86 Assembly Language Architecture (Paperback)

While this book contains a ton of useful information (especially the charts showing which processor families support which instructions), I found so many gramatical, organizational, and techinical errors in the book that they became too distracting. After getting through the first half of the book, I skimmed around through the rest...and everywhere I happened to look I found glaring problems. The text contains many incomplete sentences, confusing attempts at humor (due to poor sentence structure), and serious grammar problems that a good copy editor should have caught immediately. Likewise, I found alot of inconsistencies and errors in the code, explanations, and diagrams...which a technical editor should have caught. When a book is not properly copy-edited or technically-edited, the problem lies with the publisher, not the author. (This is the first and last book I will attempt to read from this publisher.) Bottom line: If you already know Intel assembly language, and you have the time, patience, and knowledge to recognize and wade through all the errors, you might glean some good information. But I can't, in good conscience, recommend this book.