The 8086 has four groups of the user accessible internal registers. They are the instruction pointer, four data registers, four pointer and index register, four segment registers. The 8086 has a total of fourteen 16-bit registers including a 16 bit register called the status register, with 9 of bits implemented for status and control flags.

There are four different 64 KB segments for instructions, stack, data and extra data. To Specify where in 1 MB of processor memory these 4 segments are located the processor uses four segment registers:

  • Code segment (CS) is a 16-bit register containing address of 64 KB segment with processor instructions. The processor uses CS segment for all accesses to instructions referenced by instruction pointer (IP) register. CS register cannot be changed directly. The CS register is automatically updated during far jump, far call and far return instructions.
  • Stack segment (SS) is a 16-bit register containing address of 64KB segment with program stack. By default, the processor assumes that all data referenced by the stack pointer (SP) and base pointer (BP) registers is located in the stack segment. SS register can be changed directly using POP instruction.
  • Data segment (DS) is a 16-bit register containing address of 64KB segment with program data. By default, the processor assumes that all data referenced by general registers (AX, BX, CX, DX) and index register (SI, DI) is located in the data segment.DS register can be changed directly using POP and LDS instructions.
  • Accumulator register consists of two 8-bit registers AL and AH, which can be combined together and used as a 16-bit register AX. AL in this case contains the low order byte of the word, and AH contains the high- order byte. Accumulator can be used for I/O operations and string manipulation.
  • Base register consists of two 8-bit registers BL and BH, which can be combined together and used as a 16- bit register BX. BL in this case contains the low-order byte of the word, and BH contains the high-order byte. BX register usually contains a data pointer used for based, based indexed or register indirect addressing.
  • Count register consists of two 8-bit registers CL and CH, which can be combined together and used as a 16-bit register CX. When combined, CL register contains the low order byte of the word, and CH contains the high-order byte. Count register can be used in Loop, shift/rotate instructions and as a counter in string manipulation,.
  • Data register consists of two 8-bit registers DL and DH, which can be combined together and used as a 16- bit register DX. When combined, DL register contains the low order byte of the word, and DH contains the high-order byte. Data register can be used as a port number in I/O operations. In integer 32-bit multiply and divide instruction the DX register contains high-order word of the initial or resulting number.
  • The following registers are both general and index registers:
  • Stack Pointer (SP) is a 16-bit register pointing to program stack.
  • Base Pointer (BP) is a 16-bit register pointing to data in stack segment. BP register is usually used for based, based indexed or register indirect addressing.
  • Source Index (SI) is a 16-bit register. SI is used for indexed, based indexed and register indirect addressing, as well as a source data address in string manipulation instructions.
  • Destination Index (DI) is a 16-bit register. DI is used for indexed, based indexed and register indirect addressing, as well as a destination data address in string manipulation instructions.

Instruction Pointer (IP) register acts as a program counter for 8086. It points to the address of the next instruction to be executed Its content is automatically incremented when the program execution of a program proceeds further. The contents of IP and CS register are used to compute the memory address of the instruction code to be fetched.

General data registers:

 

Flag register of 8086: It is a 16-bit register, also called flag register or Program Status Word (PSW). Seven bits remain unused while the rest nine are used to indicate the conditions of flags. The status flags of the register are shown below in Fig.

  • Out of nine flags, six are condition flags and three are control flags. The control flags
  • are TF (Trap), IF (Interrupt) and DF (Direction) flags, which can be set/reset by the
  • programmer, while the condition flags [OF (Overflow), SF (Sign), ZF (Zero), AF (Auxiliary
  • Carry), PF (Parity) and CF (Carry)] are set/reset depending on the results of some arithmetic or logical operations during program execution.
  • CF is set if there is a carry out of the MSB position resulting from an addition operation or if a borrow is needed out of the MSB position during subtraction.
  • PF is set if the lower 8-bits of the result of an operation contains an even number of 1’s. AF is set if there is a carry out of bit 3 resulting from an addition operation or borrow required from bit 4 into bit 3 during subtraction operation.
  • ZF is set if the result of an arithmetic or logical operation is zero.
  • SF is set if the MSB of the result of an operation is 1. SF is used with unsigned numbers.
  • OF is used only for signed arithmetic operation and is set if the result is too large to be fitted in the number of bits available to accommodate it.
  • The three control flags of 8086 are TF, IF and DF. These three flags are programmable, i.e., can be set/reset by the programmer so as to control the operation of the processor.
  • When TF (trap flag) is set (=1), the processor operates in single stepping mode i.e., pausing after each
  • instruction is executed. This mode is very useful during program development or program debugging.
  • When an interrupt is recognized, TF flag is cleared. When the CPU returns to the main program from ISS (interrupt service subroutine), by execution of IRET in the last line of ISS, TF flag is restored to its value that it had before interruption.
  • TF cannot be directly set or reset. So indirectly it is done by pushing the flag register on the stack, changing TF as desired and then popping the flag register from the stack.
  • When IF (interrupt flag) is set, the maskable interrupt INTR is enabled otherwise disabled (i.e., when IF = 0).
  • IF can be set by executing STI instruction and cleared by CLI instruction. Like TF flag, when an interrupt is recognized, IF flag is cleared, so that INTR is disabled. In the last line of ISS when IRET is encountered, IF is restored to its original value. When 8086 is reset, IF is cleared, i.e., resetted.
  • DF (direction flag) is used in string (also known as block move) operations. It can be set by STD instruction and cleared by CLD. If DF is set to 1 and MOVS instruction is executed, the contents of the index registers DI and SI are automatically decremented to access the string from the highest memory location down to the lowest memory location.