Introduction to ARM

Thumb Example

Here’s the ‘mystery’ routine from earlier rewritten in Thumb assembly language.

mystery MOV r1, r0
        SUB r1, #'A'
        CMP r1, #'Z' - 'A'
        BHI exit
        ADD r0, #'a' - 'A'
exit
        BX  lr

There are more instructions, but the instructions are half the size:

In ARM it’s 5 × 4 bytes = 20 bytes.
In Thumb it’s 6 × 2 bytes = 12 bytes – a 40% saving.

Remarks

Note that not all Thumb instructions are always 16-bit. In particular some branch instructions are encoded as a pair of 16-bit instructions (high and low halves).

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