A number of 8052 registers can be considered "basic." Very little can be done without them and a detailed explanation of each one is warranted to make sure the reader understands these registers before getting into more complicated areas of development.
The Accumulator
If you've worked with any other assembly language you will be familiar with the concept of an accumulator register.
The Accumulator, as its name suggests, is used as a general register to accumulate the results of a large number of instructions. It can hold an 8-bit (1-byte) value and is the most versatile register the 8052 has due to the sheer number of instructions that make use of the accumulator. More than half of the 8052's 255 instructions manipulate or use the Accumulator in some way.
For example, if you want to add the number 10 and 20, the resulting 30 will be stored in the Accumulator. Once you have a value in the Accumulator you may continue processing the value or you may store it in another register or in memory.
The "R" Registers
The "R" registers are sets of eight registers that are named R0, R1, through R7. These registers are used as auxiliary registers in many operations. To continue with the above example, perhaps you are adding 10 and 20. The original number 10 may be stored in the Accumulator whereas the value 20 may be stored in, say, register R4. To process the addition you would execute the command:
ADD A,R4
After executing this instruction the Accumulator will contain the value 30. You may think of the "R" registers as very important auxiliary, or "helper", registers. The Accumulator alone would not be very useful if it were not for these "R" registers.
The "R" registers are also used to store values temporarily. For example, letís say you want to add the values in R1 and R2 together and then subtract the values of R3 and R4. One way to do this would be:
MOV A,R3 ;Move the value of R3 to accumulator
ADD A,R4 ;Add the value of R4
MOV R5,A ;Store the result in R5
MOV A,R1 ;Move the value of R1 to Acc
ADD A,R2 ;Add the value of R2 with A
SUBB A,R5 ;Subtract the R5 (which has R3+R4)
As you can see, we used R5 to temporarily hold the sum of R3 and R4. Of course, this isn't the most efficient way to calculate (R1+R2) - (R3 +R4) but it does illustrate the use of the "R" registers as a way to store values temporarily.
As mentioned earlier, there are four sets of "R" registers-register bank 0, 1, 2, and 3. When the 8052 is first powered up, register bank 0 (addresses 00h through 07h) is used by default. In this case, for example, R4 is the same as Internal RAM address 04h. However, your program may instruct the 8052 to use one of the alternate register banks; i.e., register banks 1, 2, or 3. In this case, R4 will no longer be the same as Internal RAM address 04h. For example, if your program instructs the 8052 to use register bank 1, register R4 will now be synonymous with Internal RAM address 0Ch. If you select register bank 2, R4 is synonymous with 14h, and if you select register bank 3 it is synonymous with address 1Ch.
The concept of register banks adds a great level of flexibility to the 8052, especially when dealing with interrupts (we'll talk about interrupts later). However, always remember that the register banks really reside in the first 32 bytes of Internal RAM.
