What techniques are available for memory optimizing in 8051 assembly language?

I need to optimize code to get room for some new code. I do not have the space for all the changes. I can not use code bank switching (80c31 with 64k).


You haven't really given a lot to go on here, but there are two main levels of optimizations you can consider:

Micro-Optimizations: eg. XOR A instead of MOV A,0 Adam has covered some of these nicely earlier.

Macro-Optimizations: Look at the structure of your program, the data structures and algorithms used, the tasks performed, and think VERY hard about how these could be rearranged or even removed. Are there whole chunks of code that actually aren't used? Is your code full of debug output statements that the user never sees? Are there functions specific to a single customer that you could leave out of a general release?

To get a good handle on that, you'll need to work out WHERE your memory is being used up. The Linker map is a good place to start with this. Macro-optimizations are where the BIG wins can be made.

As an aside, you could - seriously- try rewriting parts of your code with a good optimizing C compiler. You may be amazed at how tight the code can be. A true assembler hotshot may be able to improve on it, but it can easily be better than most coders. I used the IAR one about 20 years ago, and it blew my socks off.


With assembly language, you'll have to optimize by hand. Here are a few techniques:

Note: IANA8051P (I am not an 8501 programmer but I have done lots of assembly on other 8 bit chips).

Go through the code looking for any duplicated bits, no matter how small and make them functions.

Learn some of the more unusual instructions and see if you can use them to optimize, eg. A nice trick is to use XOR A to clear the accumulator instead of MOV A,0 - it saves a byte.

Another neat trick is if you call a function before returning, just jump to it eg, instead of:

CALL otherfunc
RET

Just do:

JMP otherfunc

Always make sure you are doing relative jumps and branches wherever possible, they use less memory than absolute jumps.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head for the moment.


Sorry I am coming to this late, but I once had exactly the same problem, and it became a repeated problem that kept coming back to me. In my case the project was a telephone, on an 8051 family processor, and I had totally maxed out the ROM (code) memory. It kept coming back to me because management kept requesting new features, so each new feature became a two step process. 1) Optimize old stuff to make room 2) Implement the new feature, using up the room I just made.

There are two approaches to optimization. Tactical and Strategical. Tactical optimizations save a few bytes at a time with a micro optimization idea. I think you need strategic optimizations which involve a more radical rethinking about how you are doing things.

Something I remember worked for me and could work for you;

Look at the essence of what your code has to do and try to distill out some really strong flexible primitive operations. Then rebuild your top level code so that it does nothing low level at all except call on the primitives. Ideally use a table based approach, your table contains stuff like; Input state, event, output state, primitives.... In other words when an event happens, look up a cell in the table for that event in the current state. That cell tells you what new state to change to (optionally) and what primitive(s) (if any) to execute. You might need multiple sets of states/events/tables/primitives for different layers/subsystems.

One of the many benefits of this approach is that you can think of it as building a custom language for your particular problem, in which you can very efficiently (ie with minimal extra code) create new functionality simply by modifying the table.

Sorry I am months late and you probably didn't have time to do something this radical anyway. For all I know you were already using a similar approach! But my answer might help someone else someday who knows.

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