This is an incomplete comparison of

assemblers Assembler may refer to: Arts and media * Nobukazu Takemura, avant-garde electronic musician, stage name Assembler * Assemblers, a fictional race in the ''Star Wars'' universe * Assemblers, an alternative name of the superhero group Champions of ...

. Some assemblers are components of a compiler system for a

high-level programming language A high-level programming language is a programming language with strong Abstraction (computer science), abstraction from the details of the computer. In contrast to low-level programming languages, it may use natural language ''elements'', be ea ...

and may have limited or no usable functionality outside of the compiler system. Some assemblers are hosted on the target processor and operating system, while other assemblers (cross-assemblers) may run under an unrelated operating system or processor. For example, assemblers for

embedded system An embedded system is a specialized computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is e ...

s are not usually hosted on the target system since it would not have the storage and terminal I/O to permit entry of a program from a keyboard. An assembler may have a single target processor or may have options to support multiple processor types.

As part of a compiler suite

GNU Assembler The GNU Assembler, commonly known as gas or as, is the assembler developed by the GNU Project. It is the default back-end of GCC. It is used to assemble the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel, and various other software. It is a part o ...

(GAS): GPL: many target instruction sets, including

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer, RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for central processing unit, com ...

Atmel AVR AVR is a family of microcontrollers developed since 1996 by Atmel, acquired by Microchip Technology in 2016. They are 8-bit RISC single-chip microcontrollers based on a modified Harvard architecture. AVR was one of the first microcontroller ...

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

RISC-V RISC-V (pronounced "risk-five") is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. The project commenced in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley. It transfer ...

, Freescale 68HC11, Freescale v4e, Motorola 680x0, MIPS,

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

, IBM System z, TI MSP430,

Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be Backward compatibility, software-compatible with the ...

. *SDAS (fork of ASxxxx Cross Assemblers and part of the Small Device C Compiler project): GPL: several target instruction sets including Intel 8051,

Freescale 68HC08 The 68HC08 (also abbreviated as HC08) is a broad family of 8-bit microcontrollers from Motorola Semiconductor (later from Freescale then NXP). HC08's are fully code-compatible with their predecessors, the Motorola 68HC05. Like all Motorola proc ...

PIC microcontroller PIC (usually pronounced as /pɪk/) is a family of microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology, derived from the PIC1640 originally developed by General Instrument's Microelectronics Division. The name PIC initially referred to ''Peripher ...

. *The

Amsterdam Compiler Kit The Amsterdam Compiler Kit (ACK) is a retargetable compiler suite and toolchain written by Andrew Tanenbaum and Ceriel Jacobs, since 2005 maintained by David Given. It has frontends for the following programming languages: C, Pascal, Modula ...

(ACK) targets many architectures of the 1980s, including

6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small ...

, 6800, 680x0, ARM,

and Z8000. *

LLVM LLVM, also called LLVM Core, is a target-independent optimizer and code generator. It can be used to develop a Compiler#Front end, frontend for any programming language and a Compiler#Back end, backend for any instruction set architecture. LLVM i ...

targets many platforms, however its main focus is not machine-dependent code generation; instead a more high-level typed assembly-like

intermediate representation An intermediate representation (IR) is the data structure or code used internally by a compiler or virtual machine to represent source code. An IR is designed to be conducive to further processing, such as optimization and translation. A "good" ...

is used. Nevertheless for the most common targets the LLVM MC (machine code) project provides an assembler both as an integrated component of the compilers and as an external tool. * Some other self-hosted native-targeted language implementations (like Go,

Free Pascal Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) is a compiler for the closely related programming-language dialects Pascal and Object Pascal. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License, witexception clausesthat allow static linking against it ...

, SBCL) have their own assemblers with multiple targets. They may be used for

inline assembly In computer programming, an inline assembler is a feature of some compilers that allows low-level code written in assembly language to be embedded within a program, among code that otherwise has been compiled from a higher-level language such as ...

inside the language, or even included as a library, but aren't always suitable for being used outside of their framework - no command-line tool exists, or only the intermediate representation can be used as their input, or the set of supported targets is very limited.

Single target assemblers

6502 assemblers

680x0 assemblers

ARM assemblers

RISC-V assemblers

Mainframe Assemblers

POWER, PowerPC, and Power ISA assemblers

x86 assemblers

# Part of the MINIX 3 source tree, but without obvious development activity. # Developed by

Interactive Systems Corporation Interactive Systems Corporation (styled INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation, abbreviated ISC) was a US-based software company and the first vendor of the Unix operating system outside AT&T, operating from Santa Monica, California. It was founded in 1 ...

in 1986 when they ported

UNIX System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...

to Intel iAPX286 and 80386 architectures. Archetypical of ATT syntax because it was used as a reference for GAS. Still used for The

SCO Group The SCO Group (often referred to SCO and later called The TSG Group) was an American software company in existence from 2002 to 2012 that became known for owning Unix operating system assets that had belonged to the Santa Cruz Operation (the or ...

's products, UnixWare and OpenServer. # Active, supported, but unadvertised. # Part of the

C++Builder C++Builder is a rapid application development (RAD) environment for developing software in the C++ programming language. Originally developed by Borland, it is owned by Embarcadero Technologies, a subsidiary of Idera. C++Builder can compile ...

Tool Chain, but not sold as a stand-alone product, or marketed since the CodeGear spin-off; Borland was still selling it until then. Version 5.0, the last, is dated 1996. # Turbo Assembler was developed as ''Turbo Editasm'' by Uriah Barnett from Speedware Inc (Sacramento, CA) between 1984 and 1987, then later sold to, or marketed by, Borland as their Turbo Assembler. # Last stable version 1.3.0 was released in August 2014, and low maintenance since then: https://github.com/yasm/yasm

Z80 assemblers

Other single target assemblers

Retargetable/cross-assemblers

Notes and references

External links

List of assemblers running on S100 bus hardware, including CP/M hosted assemblers for 8080 and Z80
{{X86 assembly topics *Assembler

Assemblers Assembler may refer to: Arts and media * Nobukazu Takemura, avant-garde electronic musician, stage name Assembler * Assemblers, a fictional race in the ''Star Wars'' universe * Assemblers, an alternative name of the superhero group Champions of ...