Register Transfer Language And Micro Operations:

Register Transfer language:

 Digital systems are composed of modules that are constructed from digital
components, such as registers, decoders, arithmetic elements, and control logic
 The modules are interconnected with common data and control paths to form a
digital computer system
 The operations executed on data stored in registers are called microoperations
 A microoperation is an elementary operation performed on the information
stored in one or more registers
 Examples are shift, count, clear, and load
 Some of the digital components from before are registers that implement
microoperations
 The internal hardware organization of a digital computer is best defined by
specifying

o The set of registers it contains and their functions

o The sequence of microoperations performed on the binary information
stored
o The control that initiates the sequence of microoperations

 Use symbols, rather than words, to specify the sequence of microoperations

 The symbolic notation used is called a register transfer language
 A programming language is a procedure for writing symbols to specify a given
computational process
 Define symbols for various types of microoperations and describe associated
hardware that can implement the microoperations

Register Transfer

 Designate computer registers by capital letters to denote its function

 The register that holds an address for the memory unit is called MAR
 The program counter register is called PC
 IR is the instruction register and R1 is a processor register
 The individual flip-flops in an n-bit register are numbered in sequence from 0 to
n-1
 Refer to Figure 4.1 for the different representations of a register

 Designate information transfer from one register to

another by R2 ← R1
 This statement implies that the hardware is available
o The outputs of the source must have a path to the inputs of the
destination
o The destination register has a parallel load capability
 If the transfer is to occur only under a predetermined control condition,
designate it by
If (P = 1) then (R2 ←R1)
or,
P: R2 ← R1,
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where P is a control function that can be either 0 or 1

 Every statement written in register transfer notation implies the

presence of the required hardware construction

 It is assumed that all transfers occur during a clock edge transition

 All microoperations written on a single line are to be executed at the
same time T: R2 ← R1, R1 ←R2

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Bus and Memory Transfers

 Rather than connecting wires between all registers, a common bus is

used
 A bus structure consists of a set of common lines, one for each bit of a
register
 Control signals determine which register is selected by the bus
duringeach transfer
 Multiplexers can be used to construct a common bus
 Multiplexers select the source register whose binary information is
then placed on the bus
 The select lines are connected to the selection inputs of the
multiplexers and choose the bits of one register

 In general, a bys system will multiplex k registers of n bits each to

produce an n- line common bus
 This requires n multiplexers – one for each bit
 The size of each multiplexer must be k x 1
 The number of select lines required is log k
 To transfer information from the bus to a register, the bus lines are
connected to the inputs of all destination registers and the
corresponding load control line must be activated
 Rather than listing each step as
BUS ← C, R1 ← BUS,
use R1 ← C, since the bus is implied

 Instead of using multiplexers, three-state gates can be used to

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construct the bus system

 A three-state gate is a digital circuit that exhibits three states
 Two of the states are signals equivalent to logic 1 and 0
 The third state is a high-impedance state – this behaves like an open
circuit, which means the output is disconnected and does not have a
logic significance

 The three-state buffer gate has a normal input and a control

input which determines the output state
 With control 1, the output equals the normal input
 With control 0, the gate goes to a high-impedance state
 This enables a large number of three-state gate outputs to be connected
with wires to form a common bus line without endangering loading
effects

 Decoders are used to ensure that no more than one control input is
active at any given time
 This circuit can replace the multiplexer in Figure 4.3
 To construct a common bus for four registers of n bits each using
three-state buffers, we need n circuits with four buffers in each
 Only one decoder is necessary to select between the four registers
 Designate a memory word by the letter M
 It is necessary to specify the address of M when writing
memory transfer operations

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 Designate the address register by AR and the data register by DR

 The read operation can be stated as: Read: DR ← M[AR]
 The write operation can
be stated as:
Write: M[AR] ←R1

Arithmetic Microoperations

 There are four categories of the most common microoperations:

o Register transfer: transfer binary information from one register
to another
o Arithmetic: perform arithmetic operations on numeric
data stored in registers
o Logic: perform bit manipulation operations on non-numeric
data stored in registers
o Shift: perform shift operations on data stored in registers

 The basic arithmetic microoperations are addition, subtraction,

increment, decrement, and shift
 Example of addition: R3 ← R1+R2
 Subtraction is most often implemented through complementation and
addition
 Example of subtraction: R3 ← R1 +R2 + 1 (strikethrough denotes
bar on top – 1‟s complement of R2)
 Adding 1 to the 1‟s complement produces the 2‟s complement
 Adding the contents of R1 to the 2‟s complement of R2 is
equivalent to subtracting

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 Multiply and divide are not included as microoperations

 A microoperation is one that can be executed by one clock pulse
 Multiply (divide) is implemented by a sequence of add and shift
microoperations (subtract and shift)

 To implement the add microoperation with hardware, we need the

registers that hold the data and the digital component that performs
the addition
 A full-adder adds two bits and a previous carry
 A binary adder is a digital circuit that generates the arithmetic sum of
two binary numbers of any length
 A binary added is constructed with full-adder circuits connected in
cascade
 An n-bit binary adder requires n full-adders

 The subtraction A-B can be carried out by the following steps

o Take the 1‟s complement of B (invert each bit)

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o Get the 2‟s complement by adding 1

o Add the result to A
 The addition and subtraction operations can be combined into one
common circuit by including an XOR gate with each full-adder

 The increment microoperation adds one to a number in a register

 This can be implemented by using a binary counter – every time the
count enable is active, the count is incremented by one
 If the increment is to be performed independent of a particular
register, then use half-adders connected in cascade
 An n-bit binary incrementer requires n half-adders

 Each of the arithmetic microoperations can be implemented in one

composite arithmetic circuit
 The basic component is the parallel adder
 Multiplexers are used to choose between the different operations
 The output of the binary adder is calculated from the
following sum: D = A + Y + Cin

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Logic Microoperations

 Logic operations specify binary operations for strings of bits stored

in registers and treat each bit separately
 Example: the XOR of R1 and R2 is symbolized by
P: R1 ← R1⊕ R2
 Example: R1 = 1010 and R2 = 1100
1010 Content of R1
1100 Content of R2

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0110 Content of R1 after P = 1

 Symbols used for logical microoperations:

o OR:V
o AND: ^
o XOR: ⊕
 The + sign has two different meanings: logical OR and summation
 When + is in a microoperation, then summation
 When + is in a control function, then OR
 Example:
P + Q: R1 ←R2 + R3, R4 ← R5 V R6
 There are 16 different logic operations that can be performed with
two binary variables

 The hardware implementation of logic microoperations requires that

logic gates be inserted for each bit or pair of bits in the registers
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 All 16 microoperations can be derived from using four logic gates

 Logic microoperations can be used to change bit values, delete a

group of bits, or insert new bit values into a register
 The selective-set operation sets to 1 the bits in A where there are
corresponding 1‟s in B
1010 A before
1100 B
1110 A after
A← A B

 The selective-complement operation complements bits in A

where there are corresponding 1‟s in B
1010 A before
1100 B
0110 A after

A ← A⊕ B
 The selective-clear operation clears to 0 the bits in A only
where there are corresponding 1‟s in B
1010 A before
1100 B
0010 A after

A← A B

 The mask operation is similar to the selective-clear operation, except

that the bits of A are cleared only where there are corresponding 0‟s
in B

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1010 A before
1100 B
1000 A
A←
A B
 The insert operation inserts a new value into a group of bits
 This is done by first masking the bits to be replaced and then Oring
them with the bits to be inserted
0110 1010 A before
0000 1111 B (mask)
0000 1010 A after masking

0000 1010 A before

1001 0000 B (insert)
1001 1010 A after insertion

 The clear operation compares the bits in A and B and produces an all
0‟s result if the two number are equal
1010 A
1010 B
0000 A ← A⊕ B
Shift Microoperations

 Shift microoperations are used for serial transfer of data

 They are also used in conjunction with arithmetic, logic, and
other data- processing operations
 There are three types of shifts: logical, circular, and arithmetic
 A logical shift is one that transfers 0 through the serial input
 The symbols shl and shr are for logical shift-left and shift-right by
one position R1 ← shlR1

 The circular shift (aka rotate) circulates the bits of the register
around the two ends without loss of information
 The symbols cil and cir are for circular shift left and right

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 The arithmetic shift shifts a signed binary number to the left or right
 To the left is multiplying by 2, to the right is dividing by 2
 Arithmetic shifts must leave the sign bit unchanged
 A sign reversal occurs if the bit in Rn-1 changes in value after the shift
 This happens if the multiplication causes an overflow
 An overflow flip-flop Vs can be used to detect
theoverflow Vs = Rn-1 ⊕Rn-2

 A bi-directional shift unit with parallel load could be used to implement

this
 Two clock pulses are necessary with this configuration: one to load
the value and another to shift
 In a processor unit with many registers it is more efficient to
implement the shift operation with a combinational circuit
 The content of a register to be shifted is first placed onto a common
bus and the output is connected to the combinational shifter, the shifted
number is then loaded back into the register
 This can be constructed with multiplexers

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Arithmetic Logic Shift Unit

 The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is a common operational unit

connected to a number of storage registers
 To perform a microoperation, the contents of specified registers are
placed in the inputs of the ALU
 The ALU performs an operation and the result is then transferred to a
destination register
 The ALU is a combinational circuit so that the entire register transfer
operation from the source registers through the ALU and into the
destination register can be performed during one clock pulse period

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