While the use of the BSR with an embedded 8-bit address allows users to address the entire range of data memory, it also means that the user must always ensure that the correct bank is selected. Otherwise, data may be read from or written to the wrong location. This can be disastrous if a GPR is the intended target of an operation, but an SFR is written to instead. Verifying and/or changing the BSR for each read or write to data memory can become very inefficient.
To streamline access for the most commonly used data memory locations, the data memory is configured with an Access Bank, which allows users to access a mapped block of memory without specifying a BSR. The Access Bank consists of the first 96 bytes of memory (00h-5Fh) in Bank 0 and the last 160 bytes of memory (60h-FFh) in Block 15. The lower half is known as the “Access RAM” and is composed of GPRs. This upper half is also where the device’s SFRs are mapped. These two areas are mapped contiguously in the Access Bank and can be addressed in a linear fashion by an 8-bit address (see Data Memory Map).
The Access Bank is used by core PIC18 instructions that include the Access RAM bit (the ‘a’ parameter in the instruction). When ‘a’ is equal to ‘1’, the instruction uses the BSR and the 8-bit address included in the opcode for the data memory address. When ‘a’ is ‘0’, however, the instruction is forced to use the Access Bank address map; the current value of the BSR is ignored entirely.
Using this “forced” addressing allows the instruction to operate on a data address in a single cycle, without updating the BSR first. For 8-bit addresses of 60h and above, this means that users can evaluate and operate on SFRs more efficiently. The Access RAM below 60h is a good place for data values that the user might need to access rapidly, such as immediate computational results or common program variables. Access RAM also allows for faster and more code efficient context saving and switching of variables.
The mapping of the Access Bank is slightly different when the
extended instruction set is enabled (XINST Configuration bit = 1). This is discussed in more detail in the Mapping the Access Bank in Indexed Literal Offset Mode section.