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8086 CMP Instruction edit button Edit

author
Murugan Andezuthu Dharmaratnam | calendar 13 February 2021 | 15113

CMP is a logical instruction which compares the desticaion and the source. It compares a byte or word in the specified source with a byte or word in the destination. The destination can be a register or a memory location but the source and the destination cannot both be memory locations. This instruction will not affect the source and destination, only the flags are set to indicate the results of the comparison. AF, OF, SF, ZF, PF, and CF are updated by the CMP instruction.

Types of operands supported

Instruction	Operands
----------------------------
CMP		REG, memory
                memory, REG
		REG, REG
		memory, immediate
		REG, immediate

result is not stored anywhere, flags are set (OF, SF, ZF, AF, PF, CF) according to the result.

Sample Code

CMP CX,BX

If you compare CX with BX. Depending on the value of CX and BX the below flags will be set

 		CF 	ZF 	SF
CX = BX 	0 	1 	0 	Result of subtraction is 0
CX > BX 	0 	0 	0 	No borrow required, so CF = 0
CX < BX 	1 	0 	1 	Subtraction requires borrow, so CF = 1