SWP

SWP

Instruction	SWP[S]
Function	SWaP register with memory
Category	Semaphore
ARM family	ARMv3 (and ARMv2as (ARM3))
Notes	-

SWP : Swap

While the ARM is a Load/Store architecture, there is one significant and important exception. That exception is the use of a semaphore which must be read from and/or written to memory in one atomic cycle (so that, for instance, an interrupt cannot get between reading and writing).

SWP will swap a word between register(s) and memory as follows: There is an address and two values, an original data and loaded data.

This instruction will load a word from <address> and remember it. The contents of register <original> are then written to the location pointed to by <address>. The remembered word is then placed in <loaded> (it does not overwrite the original data).

Syntax

  SWP  <loaded>, <original>, [<address>]

Function

  <temp> = LDR [<address>, 4]
  STR [<address>, 4] = <original>
  <loaded> = <temp>

Example

  SWP  R0, R1, [R2]   ; Write R1 to location pointed to by R2 and
                      ; place original contents of that address in R0

Notes

• If <loaded> and <original> are the same, the data in register and memory swapped.
• It is not possible to read a semaphore with SWP - you should LDR from the address.
• If the address is not word aligned, things will go wrong (CPUs without an MMU will rotate right the value, CPUs with an MMU will fault).
• None of the registers specified can be R15.

Technical

The instruction bit pattern is as follows:

31 - 28	27 - 22	21 - 20	19 - 16	15 - 12	11 - 8	7 - 4	3 - 0
condition	0 0 0 1 0 0	0 0	<dest>	<load>	0 0 0 0	1 0 0 1	<value>