ARM Releases Machine Readable Architecture Specification by Alastair Reid.
From the post:
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Today ARM released version 8.2 of the ARM v8-A processor specification in machine readable form. This specification describes almost all of the architecture: instructions, page table walks, taking interrupts, taking synchronous exceptions such as page faults, taking asynchronous exceptions such as bus faults, user mode, system mode, hypervisor mode, secure mode, debug mode. It details all the instruction formats and system register formats. The semantics is written in ARM’s ASL Specification Language so it is all executable and has been tested very thoroughly using the same architecture conformance tests that ARM uses to test its processors (See my paper “Trustworthy Specifications of ARM v8-A and v8-M System Level Architecture”.)
The specification is being released in three sets of XML files:
- The System Register Specification consists of an XML file for each system register in the architecture. For each register, the XML details all the fields within the register, how to access the register and which privilege levels can access the register.
- The AArch64 Specification consists of an XML file for each instruction in the 64-bit architecture. For each instruction, there is the encoding diagram for the instruction, ASL code for decoding the instruction, ASL code for executing the instruction and any supporting code needed to execute the instruction and the decode tree for finding the instruction corresponding to a given bit-pattern. This also contains the ASL code for the system architecture: page table walks, exceptions, debug, etc.
- The AArch32 Specification is similar to the AArch64 specification: it contains encoding diagrams, decode trees, decode/execute ASL code and supporting ASL code.
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Alastair provides starting points for use of this material by outlining his prior uses of the same.
Raises the question why an equivalent machine readable data set isn’t available for Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures? (PDF manuals)
The data is there, but not in a machine readable format.
Anyone know why Intel doesn’t provide the same convenience?