Should embedded engineers learn ARM assembly instructions?

Should embedded engineers learn ARM assembly instructions?

There are many answers to this question when searching online. Most of them suggest not to learn assembly language but just learn C language.

As a driver engineer with more than ten years of experience, I personally believe that assembly language still needs to be mastered. If you want to get proficient and in-depth, knowledge of assembly and computer systems is a must.

Let’s list some questions

1. How is the system started?

2. How are C language functions called and how are parameters passed?

3. How to enable shutdown interrupt?

4. How do multi-core processors assign processes to run on a core?

5. How is MMU implemented?

6. How does the CPU handle the interrupt?

7. How are system calls implemented?

To understand these questions clearly, you must understand assembly code and ARM architecture.
System startup and power-on codes are all assembly code. If you don't understand assembly code, how do you know how the system is started?
If you want to understand the nature of pointers and function names, you must go deep into assembly-level code and disassemble to see how the underlying instructions process the advanced features of C language. This requires a solid foundation in assembly language.

1. Mastering assembly is a necessary skill for becoming a low-level system engineer or NB engineer

In addition, assembly language is not that scary. It only takes half a day to learn the dozen commonly used commands, plus the supporting pseudo instructions and basic program structure. Instead of spending half a day wondering whether to learn it or not, it is better to learn it quickly. It is better to have more skills.

Of course, before learning assembly, you also need to have an understanding of the CPU processor architecture and registers. You must know that assembly programs deal with these registers.

To learn ARM assembly, you need to master the basic architecture of the ARM processor and the register configuration in different modes.

Eventually you will find that what you are learning is not assembly, but ARM!

Assembly is just a language tool, some mnemonics.

What we want to learn is actually ARM.

2. ARM article structure

In order to help everyone learn ARM better and faster, Yikoujun has gradually broken down the knowledge points of ARM based on his many years of research and development and teaching experience, explained them in a certain order, and finally broke them down into twenty-one articles.

Yikoujun has made a detailed review of the overwhelming amount of information on the Internet. The content setting can be said to be a nanny-like explanation. You only need to follow my article and study step by step to master ARM assembly. It is truly learning ARM assembly from scratch.