TC3: A CISC machine with a register-to-memory architecture

In this section, you will learn about the design of a simulator that implements a CISC-style instruction set architecture, providing both register-to-register and register-to-memory operations. TC3 is a more sophisticated version of TC2 with a more practical architecture.

TC3 supports register direct, register indirect, memory direct, and literal addressing modes. For example, AND [R2], #129 performs a logical AND between the contents of the memory location pointed at by register R2 and the binary value 10000001.

We have included memory direct operations. These are intended to illustrate the features of a computer, rather than being practical. Early 8-bit microprocessors like the Motorola 6800 let you operate on memory directly. Most modern processors don’t. TC3 can access, say, memory at location 12 with MOV R2,M:12. This instruction loads register 2 with the contents of memory location 12. Note the syntax. A...