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Binary encoding

Status: Initial draft

The virtual machine doesn't have a name yet, but to keep it short, we refer to it as the machine.

This document contains the specification of the binary encoding of instructions, immediate values, constants, registers, jump addresses, block ordering and global constants.

Content ordering

+----------+
| Header   |
+----------+
| Segments |
+----------+

Header

Name Offset Size Description
magic 0x00 4 ascii encoded string NICE
entry_addr 0x04 4 Initial value of the ip register
load_table_size 0x08 4 Number of entries in the load table
load_table 0x0c load_table_size * 12 Load table

Load table

The load table in the programs header section includes 1 or more entries. Each entry is structured as follows:

Name Offset Size Description
Offset 0x0 4 Start offset of section
Size 0x4 4 Size of section
Load 0x8 4 Target offset in machine's memory

Given the following load table:

ID Offset Size Load
0 0x00000000 0x000002aa 0x00337a00
1 0x000002aa 0x00337a00 0x00000000
2 0x00337caa 0x00000050 0x00000050
3 0x00337cfa 0x00000100 0x00700000

The executable would consist of four segments.

+-----------+ <- 0x00000000
| Segment 0 |
+-----------+ <- 0x000002aa
| Segment 1 |
+-----------+ <- 0x00337caa
| Segment 2 |
+-----------+ <- 0x00337cfa
| Segment 3 |
+-----------+ <- 0x00337dfa

This is how they would ultimately be laid out in memory:

+-------------+ <- 0x00000000
| Segment 1   |
|             |
+-------------+ <- 0x00000050
| Segment 2   | <----------------- Because the load address of Segment 2 is set to 0x00000050,
+-------------+ <- 0x000000a0      it overlaps Segment 1 which was loaded here before.
| Segment 1   |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
+-------------+ <- 0x00337a00
| Segment 0   |
|             |
|             |
+-------------+ <- 0x00337caa
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|     ...     |
| Empty space |
|     ...     |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
|             |
+-------------+ <- 0x00700000
| Segment 3   |
+-------------+ <- 0x00700100

Registers

Registers are represented as 8 bit values. The first two bits make up the mode, the rest is the register code.

   +- Register code
   |
   v
00 000000
^
|
+- Mode

Register modes define which part of the register is being accessed.

00: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
01: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
10: 00000000 00000000
11: 00000000

Instructions

Instructions are represented as 8 bit values.

+- Opcode
|
v
00000000

Size specifiers

Size specifiers are encoded as unsigned dword values and are used to denote a given amount of bytes in an instruction argument.

Addresses

Addresses are encoded as unsigned dword values.

Offsets

Relative offsets are encoded as signed dword values.