RP2040 Assembly Language Programming

Learn to program the Raspberry Pi Pico’s dual ARM Cortex M0+ CPUs in Assembly Language. The Pico contains a customer System on a Chip (SoC) called the RP2040, making it the Foundation’s first entry into the low-cost microcontroller market. The RP2040 contains a wealth of coprocessors for performing arithmetic as well as performing specialized I/O functionality. This book will show you how these CPUs work from a low level, easy-to-learn perspective.

There are eight new Programmable I/O (PIO) coprocessors that have their own specialized Assembly Language supporting a wide variety of interface protocols. You’ll explore these protocols and write programs or functions in Assembly Language and interface to all the various bundled hardware interfaces. Then go beyond working on your own board and projects to contribute to the official RP2040 SDK. Finally, you’ll take your DIY hardware projects to the next level of performance and functionality with more advanced programming skills.

What You’ll Learn

• Read and understand the Assembly Language code that is part of the Pico’s SDK
• Integrate Assembly Language and C code together into one program
• Interface to available options for DIY electronics and IoT projects

Who This Book Is For

Makers who have already worked with microcontrollers, such as the Arduino or Pico, programming in C or Python. Those interested in going deeper and learning how these devices work at a lower level, by learning Assembly Language.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: How to Set Up the Development Environment

Chapter 2: Our First Assembly Language Program

Chapter 3: How to Build and Debug Programs

Chapter 4: How to Load and Add

Chapter 5: How to Control Program Flow

Chapter 6: Thanks for the Memories

Chapter 7: How to Call Functions and Use the Stack

Chapter 8: Interacting with C and the SDK

Chapter 9: How to Program the Built-in Hardware

Chapter 10: How to Initialize and Interact with Programmable 1/0

Chapter 11: How to Set and Catch Interrupts

Chapter 12: Multiplication, Division, and Floating Point

Chapter 13: Multiprocessing

Chapter 14: How to Connect Pico to loT

Appendix A: ASCII Character Set

Appendix B: Assembler Directives

Appendix C: Binary Formats

Appendix D: The ARM Instruction Set

About the Author

​Stephen Smith is a retired Software Architect, located in Gibsons, BC, Canada. He’s been developing software since high-school, or way too many years to record. Since retiring he has pursued Artificial Intelligence programming, earned his Advanced HAM Radio License and enjoys mountain biking, hiking, and nature photography. He continues to write his popular technology blog at smist08.wordpress.com.