Sebastian Theophil
Passive ARM Assembly Skills for Debugging, Optimization (and Hacking)
#1about 2 minutes
Core concepts of ARM assembly language
Assembly language consists of instructions and operands like registers, immediate values, memory addresses, and labels.
#2about 2 minutes
Overview of ARM CPU architecture and memory
Modern ARM CPUs like the Apple M1 feature numerous 64-bit registers and a multi-level cache system to mitigate slow main memory access.
#3about 3 minutes
Implementing a Fibonacci sequence loop in assembly
A practical example demonstrates basic ARM instructions like MOV, ADD, SUB, CMP, and B.NE for arithmetic and control flow.
#4about 3 minutes
Comparing handwritten assembly to optimized compiler output
The compiler often generates more efficient code than a direct translation, such as converting an incrementing for-loop into a decrementing counter.
#5about 4 minutes
Managing local variables using the stack
The stack provides fast, temporary memory for local variables, managed by the stack pointer (SP) and accessed with store (STR) and load (LDR) instructions.
#6about 4 minutes
How function calls work in ARM assembly
Function calls use the Branch and Link (BL) instruction, which saves the return address in the link register (X30) and transfers control.
#7about 2 minutes
The ARM procedure call standard and ABI
The Application Binary Interface (ABI) defines strict rules for register usage, including which registers pass arguments, return values, and must be saved by the caller or callee.
#8about 4 minutes
Loading 64-bit pointers with 32-bit instructions
ARM uses a two-step process with ADRP and ADD instructions to load a full 64-bit address by first getting the memory page and then the offset within it.
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