Firstly I must say I'm surprised there has been no threads started here by now. Are there really no ASM, or prospective ASM, coders out there?
Back to the question. One very good reason for avoiding ASM is the way in which processors and their instructions sets have a habit of disappearing, going obsolete or evolving in incompatible ways. Is the plan for the XMOS instruction set to be around as it is for a long time?
Or is it considered to be malleable in future iterations of devices?
Yes I know C and XC can compile to efficient and compact code and paper over any architectural changes but sometimes you just have to ring things out a bit:)
Is the XMOS instruction set liable to change?
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richardstephens
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mon2
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There are a few good ASM coders on this forum and some have offered their projects as open source. Trying to get the broken links restored so that we can all continue to learn from experienced developers. If you see a broken link, report it back and will forward to the proper support group. Personally grew up with the Cosmac ELF-II (1802), 6502, 6805, 8085, 8051, etc. all in assembler and often hand coding without such tools as they were not affordable when I was a student.
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mon2
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akp
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Obviously when the XS2A came out with dual issue capability the assembly had to change from XS1 to support it. But it was a pretty minimal change once understood, and you can even force it to single issue if you didn't want to change the assembly to deal with a core running in dual issue mode. I suspect with XS3 there will be a few more changes, but I wouldn't be too worried about it. As long as XMOS is a viable company you should probably be pretty much fine with a few changes when the architecture gets an upgrade.