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An illegal opcode, also called an unimplemented operation, unintended opcode or undocumented instruction, is an instruction to a
CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
that is not mentioned in any official documentation released by the CPU's designer or manufacturer, which nevertheless has an effect. Illegal opcodes were common on older CPUs designed during the 1970s, such as the MOS Technology 6502,
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
8086 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowi ...
, and the
Zilog Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors and 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers. It is also a supplier of application-specific embedded system-on-chip (SoC) products. Its most famous product is the Z80 series of 8-bit microp ...
Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...
. On these older processors, many exist as a side effect of the wiring of
transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
s in the CPU, and usually combine functions of the CPU that were not intended to be combined. On old and modern processors, there are also instructions intentionally included in the processor by the manufacturer, but that are not documented in any official specification. The effect of many illegal opcodes, on many processors, is just a
trap A trap is a mechanical device used to capture or restrain an animal for purposes such as hunting, pest control, or ecological research. Trap or TRAP may also refer to: Art and entertainment Films and television * ''Trap'' (2015 film), Fil ...
to an error handler. However, some processors that trap for most illegal opcodes do not do so for some illegal opcodes, and some other processors do not check for illegal opcodes, and, instead, perform an undocumented operation.


Overview

While most accidental illegal instructions have useless or even highly undesirable effects (such as crashing the computer), some can have useful functions in certain situations. Such instructions were sometimes exploited in
computer game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...
s of the 1970s and 1980s to speed up certain time-critical sections. Another common use was in the ongoing battle between
copy protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on ...
implementations and cracking. Here, they were a form of
security through obscurity Security through obscurity (or security by obscurity) is the reliance in security engineering on design or implementation secrecy as the main method of providing security to a system or component. History An early opponent of security through ob ...
, and their secrecy usually did not last very long. A danger associated with the use of illegal instructions was that, given the fact that the manufacturer does not guarantee their existence and function, they might disappear or behave differently with any change of the CPU internals or any new revision of the CPU, rendering programs that use them incompatible with the newer revisions. For example, a number of older
Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
games did not work correctly on the newer
Apple IIc The Apple IIc, the fourth model in the Apple II series of personal computers, is Apple Computer's first endeavor to produce a portable computer. The result was a notebook-sized version of the Apple II that could be transported from place to pl ...
, because the latter used a newer CPU revision
65C02 The Western Design Center (WDC) 65C02 microprocessor is an enhanced CMOS version of the popular nMOS-based 8-bit MOS Technology 6502. The 65C02 fixed several problems in the original 6502 and added some new instructions, but its main feature wa ...
that did away with illegal opcodes. More recent CPUs, such as the
80186 The Intel 80186, also known as the iAPX 186, or just 186, is a microprocessor and microcontroller introduced in 1982. It was based on the Intel 8086 and, like it, had a 16-bit external data bus multiplexed with a 20-bit address bus. The 801 ...
, 80286, 68000 and its descendants, do not have illegal opcodes that are widely known/used. Ideally, the CPU will behave in a well-defined way when it finds an unknown opcode in the instruction stream, such as triggering a certain exception or fault condition. The
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
's exception or fault handler will then usually terminate the application that caused the fault, unless the program had previously established its own exception/fault handler, in which case that handler would receive control. Another, less common way of handling illegal instructions is by defining them to do nothing except taking up time and space (equivalent to the CPU's official NOP instruction); this method is used by the
TMS9900 Introduced in June 1976, the TMS9900 was one of the first commercially available, single-chip 16-bit microprocessors. It implemented Texas Instruments' TI-990 minicomputer architecture in a single-chip format, and was initially used for low-end m ...
and
65C02 The Western Design Center (WDC) 65C02 microprocessor is an enhanced CMOS version of the popular nMOS-based 8-bit MOS Technology 6502. The 65C02 fixed several problems in the original 6502 and added some new instructions, but its main feature wa ...
processors, among others. Alternatively, unknown instructions can be emulated in software (e.g. LOADALL), or even "new" pseudo-instructions can be implemented. Some
BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...
es, memory managers, and operating systems take advantage of this, for example, to let V86 tasks communicate with the underlying system, i.e. BOP (from "BIOS Operation") utilized by the Windows NTVDM. In spite of Intel's guarantee against such instructions, research using techniques such as fuzzing uncovered a vast number of undocumented instructions in x86 processors as late as 2018. Some of these instructions are shared across processor manufacturers, indicating that Intel and
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
are both aware of the instruction and its purpose, despite it not appearing in any official specification. Other instructions are specific to manufacturers or specific product lines. The purpose of the majority of x86 undocumented instructions is unknown. Today, the details of these instructions are mainly of interest for exact emulation of older systems.


See also

*
Backdoor (computing) A backdoor is a typically covert method of bypassing normal authentication or encryption in a computer, product, embedded device (e.g. a home router), or its embodiment (e.g. part of a cryptosystem, algorithm, chipset, or even a "homunculus compu ...
* Don't care term * Easter egg (media) * Gadget (machine instruction sequence) *
Halt and Catch Fire (computing) In computer engineering, Halt and Catch Fire, known by the assembly mnemonic HCF, is an idiom referring to a computer machine code instruction that causes the computer's central processing unit (CPU) to cease meaningful operation, typically r ...
*
Microcode In processor design, microcode (μcode) is a technique that interposes a layer of computer organization between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. Microcode is a laye ...
* Pentium F00F bug * Trap (computing) *
Undocumented feature An undocumented feature is an unintended or undocumented hardware operation, for example an undocumented instruction, or software feature found in computer hardware and software that is considered beneficial or useful. Sometimes the documentation ...


References


Further reading

* (NB. Illegal opcodes on the 6502.) * *

https://web.archive.org/web/20190713083631/http://www.myquest.nl/z80undocumented/z80-documented.tex] (NB. Illegal opcodes on the Z80.) * {{cite web , editor-first=Ralf D. , editor-last=Brown , editor-link=Ralf D. Brown , url=https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/files.html , title=The x86 Interrupt List , edition=61 , date=2002-12-29 , orig-year=2000-07-17, 1985 , access-date=2011-10-14 , url-status=live , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170822194456/https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/files.html , archive-date=2017-08-22}

https://web.archive.org/web/20170902120420/https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/interrupt-list/inter61b.zi

https://web.archive.org/web/20170902120447/https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/interrupt-list/inter61d.zi

https://web.archive.org/web/20170902120507/https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/interrupt-list/inter61f.zi

(NB.
Ralf Brown's Interrupt List Ralf Brown's Interrupt List (aka RBIL, x86 Interrupt List, MS-DOS Interrupt List or INTER) is a comprehensive list of interrupts, calls, hooks, interfaces, data structures, CMOS settings, memory and port addresses, as well as processor opcodes a ...
's also contains some information about undocumented processor opcodes and processor bugs: OPCODES.LST by Alex V. Potemkin and 86BUGS.LST by Harald Feldmann.)


External links


Christian Ludloff's site sandpile.org also contains info on undocumented opcodes
Machine code