PIC18F2420/2520/4420/4520
The CALLand GOTOinstructions have the absolute pro-
gram memory address embedded into the instruction.
Since instructions are always stored on word boundar-
ies, the data contained in the instruction is a word
address. The word address is written to PC<20:1>,
which accesses the desired byte address in program
memory. Instruction #2 in Figure 5-4 shows how the
instruction GOTO 0006h is encoded in the program
memory. Program branch instructions, which encode a
relative address offset, operate in the same manner. The
offset value stored in a branch instruction represents the
number of single-word instructions that the PC will be
offset by. Section 24.0 “Instruction Set Summary”
provides further details of the instruction set.
5.2.3
INSTRUCTIONS IN PROGRAM
MEMORY
The program memory is addressed in bytes. Instruc-
tions are stored as two bytes or four bytes in program
memory. The Least Significant Byte of an instruction
word is always stored in a program memory location
with an even address (LSb = 0). To maintain alignment
with instruction boundaries, the PC increments in steps
of 2 and the LSb will always read ‘0’ (see Section 5.1.1
“Program Counter”).
Figure 5-4 shows an example of how instruction words
are stored in the program memory.
FIGURE 5-4:
INSTRUCTIONS IN PROGRAM MEMORY
Word Address
LSB = 1
LSB = 0
↓
Program Memory
Byte Locations →
000000h
000002h
000004h
000006h
000008h
00000Ah
00000Ch
00000Eh
000010h
000012h
000014h
Instruction 1:
Instruction 2:
MOVLW
GOTO
055h
0006h
0Fh
EFh
F0h
C1h
F4h
55h
03h
00h
23h
56h
Instruction 3:
MOVFF
123h, 456h
the instruction sequence. If the first word is skipped for
some reason and the second word is executed by itself,
a NOPis executed instead. This is necessary for cases
when the two-word instruction is preceded by a condi-
tional instruction that changes the PC. Example 5-4
shows how this works.
5.2.4
TWO-WORD INSTRUCTIONS
The standard PIC18 instruction set has four two-word
instructions: CALL, MOVFF, GOTO and LSFR. In all
cases, the second word of the instructions always has
‘1111’ as its four Most Significant bits; the other 12 bits
are literal data, usually a data memory address.
Note:
See Section 5.6 “PIC18 Instruction
Execution and the Extended Instruc-
tion Set” for information on two-word
instructions in the extended instruction set.
The use of ‘1111’ in the 4 MSbs of an instruction spec-
ifies a special form of NOP. If the instruction is executed
in proper sequence – immediately after the first word –
the data in the second word is accessed and used by
EXAMPLE 5-4:
CASE 1:
TWO-WORD INSTRUCTIONS
Source Code
Object Code
0110 0110 0000 0000 TSTFSZ
REG1
REG1, REG2 ; No, skip this word
; Execute this word as a NOP
; continue code
; is RAM location 0?
1100 0001 0010 0011
1111 0100 0101 0110
0010 0100 0000 0000
CASE 2:
MOVFF
ADDWF
REG3
Object Code
Source Code
TSTFSZ
0110 0110 0000 0000
1100 0001 0010 0011
1111 0100 0101 0110
0010 0100 0000 0000
REG1
; is RAM location 0?
MOVFF
REG1, REG2 ; Yes, execute this word
; 2nd word of instruction
ADDWF
REG3
; continue code
DS39631E-page 58
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