ARM system developer's guide

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1. rramadassAug 2026
   You might also want to checkout the Assembly books by Larry Pyeatt (ARM only) and Daniel Kusswurm (x86 + ARM).

   Another excellent classic which you should checkout if you are interested in all things ARM is ARM System Developer's Guide: Designing and Optimizing System Software by Sloss, Symes and Wright. It is old and so does not cover newer ARM architectures but will give you a solid foundation for system programming.

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2. rhexsDec 2016
   The ARM System Developer's Guide is one of the best ARM books I've ever read. Has nothing to do with reverse engineering, but a great ARM reference.

   If you can reverse engineering in X86, a reference for ARM ASM is all you'll need. (could get by with the official docs but this book really is something special)

   You'll weep tears of joy going from X86's nightmarish instruction set to the beauty of RISC ARM!

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3. syncopateJan 2014
   A good way to learn asm is through books but there are not many for current architectures (especially x64, except the official Intel manuals which are quite good but also hard to read). Nevertheless, there are some on ARM which I can recommend, namely: ARM System Developer's Guide by Sloss, Symes and Wright. ARM Assembly Language by Hohl. ARM SoC Architecture by Furber.

   IDA Pro is the industry standard for reverse engineering but it also is expensive (like USD $2k). There is a free version but it doesn't offer 64bit, so not really an option for modern ObjC or Intel computers. As you've mentioned ObjC chances are you work on OS X. IDA pro is not working well on OS X (the recommended way is to use the Windows version via virtualbox and not the OS X version). Still, Hopper.app is a great alternative on OS X. Not as good as IDA, but it has a Python interface, GDB support, and decompile support for ARM, Intel (and some knowledge regarding Objc). And it's only ~USD$100. [There is also a Windows version of hopper.app but it seems not yet ready to use, as I've only heard bad things about it there so far.]

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4. pietrofmaggiSep 2010
   Now with a bit more of time, just for sake of completeness (from the ARM's System Developers Guide).

   "If your code uses addition, subtraction, and multiplication then there's no performance difference between signed and unsigned operation. However, there is a difference when it comes to division."

   Consider the following short example that averages two integers:

     int average_v1(int a, int b)
     {
       return (a+b)/2;
     }
   

   This compiles to:

     average_v1
       ADD r0, r0, r1            ; r0 = a+ b
       ADD r0, r0, r0, LSR #31   ; if (r0<0) r0++
       MOV r0, r0, ASR #1        ; r0 = r0 >> 1
       MOV ro, r14               ; return ro
   

   Notice that the compiler adds one to the sum before shifting by right if the sum is negative. In other words it replaces x/2 by the statement:

     (x<0)?((x+1)>>1):(x>>1)
   

   It must do this because x is signed. In C on an ARM target, a divide by two is not a right shift if x is negative. For example, -3 >> 1 = -2 but -3/2 = -1. Division rounds towards zero, but arithmetic right shift rounds towards -inf.

   It is more efficient to use unsigned types for division. The compiler converts unsigned power of two divisions directly to right shifts.

   For this and other fancy ARM insight take a look at the ARM System Developer's Guide, really a nice book: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/70...

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