PIC18LF4331 datasheet(68/392 Pages) MICROCHIP

68 / 392 page

PIC18F2331/2431/4331/4431

DS39616D-page 68

 2010 Microchip Technology Inc.

6.5.1

BANK SELECT REGISTER (BSR)

Large areas of data memory require an efficient

addressing scheme to make rapid access to any

address possible. Ideally, this means that an entire

address does not need to be provided for each read or

write operation. For PIC18 devices, this is accom-

plished with a RAM banking scheme. This divides the

memory space into 16 contiguous banks of 256 bytes.

Depending on the instruction, each location can be

addressed directly by its full 12-bit address, or an 8-bit

low-order address and a four-bit Bank Pointer. Most

instructions in the PIC18 instruction set make use of

the Bank Pointer, known as the Bank Select Register

(BSR). This SFR holds the four Most Significant bits of

a location’s address; the instruction itself includes the

eight Least Significant bits. Only the four lower bits of

the BSR are implemented (BSR<3:0>). The upper four

bits are unused; they will always read ‘0’ and cannot be

written to. The BSR can be loaded directly by using the

MOVLB

instruction.

The value of the BSR indicates the bank in data mem-

ory. The eight bits in the instruction show the location in

the bank and can be thought of as an offset from the

bank’s lower boundary. The relationship between the

BSR’s value and the bank division in data memory is

shown in Figure 6-6.

Since up to 16 registers may share the same low-order

address, the user must always be careful to ensure that

the proper bank is selected before performing a data

read or write. For example, writing what should be pro-

gram data to the eight-bit address of F9h, while the

BSR is 0Fh, will end up resetting the program counter.

While any bank can be selected, only those banks that

are actually implemented can be read or written to.

Writes to unimplemented banks are ignored, while

reads from unimplemented banks will return ‘0’s. Even

so, the STATUS register will still be affected as if the

operation was successful. The data memory map in

Figure 6-5 indicates which banks are implemented.

In the core PIC18 instruction set, only the MOVFF

instruction fully specifies the 12-bit address of the

source and target registers. This instruction ignores the

BSR completely when it executes. All other instructions

include only the low-order address as an operand and

must use either the BSR or the Access Bank to locate

their target registers.

6.5.2

ACCESS BANK

While the use of the BSR with an embedded 8-bit

address allows users to address the entire range of

data memory, it also means that the user must always

ensure that the correct bank is selected; otherwise,

data may be read from or written to the wrong location.

This can be disastrous if a GPR is the intended target

of an operation, but an SFR is written to instead.

Verifying and/or changing the BSR for each read or

write to data memory can become very inefficient.

To streamline access for the most commonly used data

memory locations, the data memory is configured with

an Access Bank, which allows users to access a

mapped block of memory without specifying a BSR.

The Access Bank consists of the first 128 bytes of

memory (00h-7Fh) in Bank 0 and the last 128 bytes of

memory (80h-FFh) in Block 15. The lower half is known

as the “Access RAM” and is composed of GPRs. This

upper half is also where the device’s SFRs are

mapped. These two areas are mapped contiguously in

the Access Bank and can be addressed in a linear

fashion by an 8-bit address (Figure 6-6).

The Access Bank is used by core PIC18 instructions

that include the Access RAM bit (the ‘a’ parameter in

the instruction). When ‘a’ is equal to ‘1’, the instruction

uses the BSR and the 8-bit address included in the

opcode for the data memory address. When ‘a’ is ‘0’,

however, the instruction is forced to use the Access

Bank address map; the current value of the BSR is

ignored entirely.

Using this “forced” addressing allows the instruction to

operate on a data address in a single cycle, without

updating the BSR first. For 8-bit addresses of 80h and

above, this means that users can evaluate and operate

on SFRs more efficiently. The Access RAM below 80h

is a good place for data values that the user might need

to access rapidly, such as immediate computational

results or common program variables. Access RAM

also allows for faster and more code efficient context

saving and switching of variables.

6.5.3

GENERAL PURPOSE REGISTER

(GPR) FILE

PIC18 devices may have banked memory in the GPR

area. This is data RAM, which is available for use by all

instructions. GPRs start at the bottom of Bank 0

(address 000h) and grow upwards towards the bottom of

the SFR area. GPRs are not initialized by a Power-on

Reset and are unchanged on all other Resets.

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