About
The General purpose registers are available for storing:
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Mode
32-bit
| Register | Name | Use |
|---|---|---|
| EAX | Accumulator | Accumulator for operands and results data, Used in arithmetic operations |
| EBX | Base | Pointer to data in the DS segment |
| ECX | Counter | Counter for string, loop and shift/rotate operations |
| EDX | Data | I/O pointer, used in arithmetic operations and I/O operations. |
| Stream Operations | ||
| ESI | Source Index | Pointer to data in the segment pointed to by the DS register; source pointer for string operations, Used as a pointer to a source in stream operations |
| EDI | Destination Index | Pointer to data (or destination) in the segment pointed to by the ES register; destination pointer for string operations, Used as a pointer to a destination in stream operations |
| Stack | ||
| ESP | Stack pointer | Stack pointer (in the SS segment), Pointer to the top of the stack. As a general rule it should not be used for another purpose. |
| EBP | Base Pointer | Base Pointer to data on the stack (in the SS segment), point to the base of the stack |
16-bit
The following bit can be referenced by name:
- The lower 16 bits of the 32-bit general-purpose registers that map directly to the register set found in the 8086 and Intel 286 processors (.X)
- Each of the lower two bytes of the registers (.H for high and .L for low)
| 16-bit register | high bytes name | low bytes | 32-bit register |
|---|---|---|---|
| AX | AH | AL | EAX |
| BX | BH | BL | EBX |
| CX | CH | CL | ECX |
| DX | DH | DL | EDX |
| BP | EBP | ||
| SI | ESI | ||
| DI | EDI | ||
| SP | ESP |
64-bit
The Registers only available in 64-bit mode are R8-R15 and XMM8-XMM15.
Addressable General Purpose Registers:
| operand size | Register Type | Available Registers (With Rex) | Available Registers (Without REX) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8-bit | Byte Registers | AL, BL, CL, DL, DIL, SIL, BPL, SPL, R8L - R15L | AL, BL, CL, DL, AH, BH, CH, DH |
| 16-bit | Word Registers | AX, BX, CX, DX, DI, SI, BP, SP, R8W - R15W | AX, BX, CX, DX, DI, SI, BP, SP |
| 32-bit | Doubleword Registers | EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX, EDI, ESI, EBP, ESP, R8D - R15D | EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX, EDI, ESI, EBP, ESP |
| 64-bit | Quadword Registers | RAX, RBX, RCX, RDX, RDI, RSI, RBP, RSP, R8-R15 | NA |
REX prefixes are used to generate 64-bit operand sizes or to reference registers R8-R15.
Documentation / Reference
- Vol1 - 3.4 - Basic Program execution registers - https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-sdm
- The special uses of general-purpose registers by instructions are described in Chapter 5, “Instruction Set Summary,” in this volume. See also: Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 of Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual, Volumes 2A, 2B & 2C