At the core of Indirect Addressing are three sets of registers: FSR0, FSR1 and FSR2. Each represents a pair of 8-bit registers, FSRnH and FSRnL. Each FSR pair holds a 12-bit value, therefore, the four upper bits of the FSRnH register are not used. The 12-bit FSR value can address the entire range of the data memory in a linear fashion. The FSR register pairs, then, serve as pointers to data memory locations.
Indirect Addressing is accomplished with a set of Indirect File Operands, INDF0 through INDF2. These can be thought of as “virtual” registers; they are mapped in the SFR space but are not physically implemented. Reading or writing to a particular INDF register actually accesses its corresponding FSR register pair. A read from INDF1, for example, reads the data at the address indicated by FSR1H:FSR1L. Instructions that use the INDF registers as operands actually use the contents of their corresponding FSR as a pointer to the instruction’s target. The INDF operand is just a convenient way of using the pointer.
Because Indirect Addressing uses a full 12-bit address, the FSR value can target any location in any bank regardless of the BSR value. However, the Access RAM bit must be cleared to 0 to ensure that the INDF register in Access space is the object of the operation instead of a register in one of the other banks. The assembler default value for the Access RAM bit is zero when targeting any of the indirect operands.