Please explain your answer Thank you What does ALIGN 8 5 mea

What does \"ALIGN 8, 5\" mean? Draw the data memory layout assuming that the data memory starts at 0x20000000. AREA my Data, Data ALIGN 4 DCB 1 DCB 2 DCB 3 ALIGN 8, 5 DCB 5

Solution

Align instruction in arm assembly is used to align the address to a particular word/byte or double word size.

The format of the instruction is:

ALIGN {expr{,offset{,pad{,padsize}}}}
where:
expr
is a numeric expression evaluating to any power of 2 from 20 to 231
offset
can be any numeric expression
pad
can be any numeric expression
padsize
can be 1, 2 or 4.

ALIGN 4 will align the addresses to word size (4 byte). Like 0x2000_0004 or 0x2000_0008 etc

Similary ALIGN 8 will align the address to double word size (8 byte). like 0x2000_0008 and 0x2000_0010 etc.

The ALIGN 8,5

Here 5 represents the padding so the next instruction will be 8 byte aligned with offset of 5 and the addresses will go accordingly.

The address will be 0x2000_0008 + 0x5 as the offset.

Assuming the dcb is placed at address 0x2000_0008