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Nanac

Nanac is a tiny C virtual machine, with a small Python two-pass assembler. The portable microcode VM is under 200 lines of C and is fully modular, which allows modules to be added at fruntime or compile-time without changing the assembler or core VM code.

Features

  • 256 registers, no stack, 16bit address space
  • Register windows for subroutines
  • Easy and quick to modify and experiment
  • Typeless registers, void*, for extensibility
  • No heap allocation in VM core
  • Microcontroller friendly
  • Clean portable C89 / ANSI-C code
  • Auto-updating (dis)assembler
  • Bytecode to C translator
  • Highly modular (can even add opcodes at runtime)

Example.asm

$ZERO 0   # Friendly names for registers
$ONE 1

:start  jmp to :main
:exit   jmp die
:main
    reg mov $ZERO $ONE
    reg swp $ONE $ZERO
    cnd neq $ZERO $ONE
    jmp to :exit

:end
    cnd eq $ZERO $ONE
    jmp to :exit

When executing it will generate a trace:

@0    jmp to 2 0
@2    reg mov 0 1
@3    reg swp 1 0
@4    cnd neq 0 1
@6    cnd eq 0 1
@7    jmp to 1 0
@1    jmp die 0 0

The assembler will generate a listing:

00000200 @0    jmp to :main   # test/example.asm:5
00010000 @1    jmp die    # test/example.asm:6
02000001 @2    reg mov $ZERO $ONE  # test/example.asm:8
02020100 @3    reg swp $ONE $ZERO  # test/example.asm:9
01010001 @4    cnd neq $ZERO $ONE  # test/example.asm:10
00000100 @5    jmp to :exit   # test/example.asm:11
01000001 @6    cnd eq $ZERO $ONE  # test/example.asm:14
00000100 @7    jmp to :exit   # test/example.asm:15

Using and Extending

The builtins and vm are contained in libnanac.a and nanac.h which can be included in projects as a git submodule. Build with:

git submodule add https://github.com/HarryR/nanac
cc -o myproject.exe -Inanac myproject.c -Lnanac -lnanac

Implementing a native command

All commands have the same interface, they are passed the CPU context pointer and two 8 bit values from the data half of the opcode. Each opcode is 4 bytes, two indicating the module and command, then two arbitrary arguments.

Access registers through nanac_reg_get and nanac_reg_set, all registers are a union type called nanac_reg_t.

int reg_mov( struct nanac_s *cpu, unsigned char arga, unsigned char argb )
{
    nanac_reg_set(cpu, arga, nanac_reg_get(cpu, argb));
    return NANAC_OK;
}

Registering a native module

int jmp_to( struct nanac_s *cpu, unsigned char arga, unsigned char argb )
{
    // ...
    return NANAC_OK
}

static const nanac_cmd_t _cmds_jmp[4] = {
    {"to", &jmp_to},
    {"die", &jmp_die},
    {"sub", &jmp_sub},
    {"ret", &jmp_ret},
};
nanac_mods_add(mods, "jmp", 4, _cmds_jmp);

Example host program

int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
    struct nanac_mods_s mods;
    struct nanac_s ctx;
    int ret;

    nanac_mods_init(&mods);         /* setup standard built-in modules + commands */
    nanac_mods_builtins(&mods);
    
    nanac_init(&ctx, &mods);        /* initialise context/CPU with the modules */

    if( load_file(&ctx, argv[1]) )  /* load bytecode file into ctx.ops */
    {
        ret = nanac_run(&ctx);
        if( ctx.ops )
            free(ctx.ops);  /* free loaded file */
    }

    return ret;
}

Opcodes and Instructions

The machine uses 32bit operations encoded as 4 independent bytes:

  • module ID uint8
  • cmd ID uint8
  • arg A uint8
  • arg B uint

New operations are registered as modules containing commands in your programs source code, the module and cmd IDs, when new modules are added the assembler & disassembler automatically update their instructions.

There are 2^8 registers, each is a native sized void* pointer.

There can be up to 2^16 operations (256 kilobytes of code), the instruction pointer eip is 16bit.

Basic Modules:

  • jmp - Jumps and subroutines
  • cnd - Conditionally execute the next opcode
  • reg - Register manipulation

Other modules must be implemented by the user.

jmp module

  • to :label - Immediate jump to an absolute address
  • die - Terminate program
  • sub :label - Enter sub-routine, allowing for ret to return
  • ret $A $B - Load opcode from register A, reduce register window by B, run temporary opcode

cnd module

  • eq $A $B - If $A and $B are equal, execute next instruction
  • neq $A $B - If $A and $B aren't the same, execute next instruction
  • nil $A $B - f either $A or $B are uninitialised (NULL), execute next instruction
  • nz $A $B - If either $A or $B are not uninitialised (NULL), execute next instruction

reg module

  • swp $A $B - Swap register B with register A
  • mov $A $B - Copy register B to register A
  • crl $A $B - Reset registers A and B to an uninitialised state (e.g. NULL)
  • win $A $B - Increment register window by $A, decrement by $B