Topic : page0 or bit keyword

Forum : ST7/STM8

Original Post
Post Information Post
May 3, 2011 - 1:41pm
Guest

Hi,

I have some flags in my code and the processor uses them very frequently. I want to improve the performance of the processor. I saw that converting some page0 flags into bit flags causes code size to be bigger. My code is like below:

...
page0 u8 flag1;
bit flag2;
...

I have enough RAM area so from the performance point of view, which keyword should I use to define variables? "page0" or "bit"?

Thanks&Regards
Replies
Post Information Post
+1
0
-1
May 3, 2011 - 3:17pm
Raisonance Support Team

Hi Volkan,

You are right: The STM8 is not very efficient concerning bit handling. A BSET/BRES instruction is 4 bytes long, although a CLR/INC/DEC on a page0 byte variable is only 2 bytes.

I would suggest to keep using "page0 unsigned char" as your default bit type, as the code will probably be more efficient.

Note that on ST7, the bit handling is much better (as bit-addressable memory is limited to 256 bytes) than on STM8.

Best Regards,