Decoding and matching Chip 8 opcodes in C/C++

Question

I'm writing a Chip 8 emulator as an introduction to emulation and I'm kind of lost. Basically, I've read a Chip 8 ROM and stored it in a char array in memory. Then, following a guide, I use the following code to retrieve the opcode at the current program counter (pc):

// Fetch opcode
opcode = memory[pc] << 8 | memory[pc + 1];

Chip 8 opcodes are 2 bytes each. This is code from a guide which I vaguely understand as adding 8 extra bit spaces to memory[pc] (using << 8) and then merging memory[pc + 1] with it (using |) and storing the result in the opcode variable.

Now that I have the opcode isolated however, I don't really know what to do with it. I'm using this opcode table and I'm basically lost in regards to matching the hex opcodes I read to the opcode identifiers in that table. Also, I realize that many of the opcodes I'm reading also contain operands (I'm assuming the latter byte?), and that is probably further complicating my situation.

Help?!

Answer 1

Basically once you have the instruction you need to decode it. For example from your opcode table:

if ((inst&0xF000)==0x1000)
{
  write_register(pc,(inst&0x0FFF)<<1);
}

And guessing that since you are accessing rom two bytes per instruction, the address is probably a (16 bit) word address not a byte address so I shifted it left one (you need to study how those instructions are encoded, the opcode table you provided is inadequate for that, well without having to make assumptions).

There is a lot more that has to happen and I dont know if I wrote anything about it in my github samples. I recommend you create a fetch function for fetching instructions at an address, a read memory function, a write memory function a read register function, write register function. I recommend your decode and execute function decodes and executes only one instruction at a time. Normal execution is to just call it in a loop, it provides the ability to do interrupts and things like that without a lot of extra work. It also modularizes your solution. By creating the fetch() read_mem_byte() read_mem_word() etc functions. You modularize your code (at a slight cost of performance), makes debugging much easier as you have a single place where you can watch registers or memory accesses and figure out what is or isnt going on.

Based on your question, and where you are in this process, I think the first thing you need to do before writing an emulator is to write a disassembler. Being a fixed instruction length instruction set (16 bits) that makes it much much easier. You can start at some interesting point in the rom, or at the beginning if you like, and decode everything you see. For example:

if ((inst&0xF000)==0x1000)
{
  printf("jmp 0x%04X\n",(inst&0x0FFF)<<1);
}

With only 35 instructions that shouldnt take but an afternoon, maybe a whole saturday, being your first time decoding instructions (I assume that based on your question). The disassembler becomes the core decoder for your emulator. Replace the printf()s with emulation, even better leave the printfs and just add code to emulate the instruction execution, this way you can follow the execution. (same deal have a disassemble a single instruction function, call it for each instruction, this becomes the foundation for your emulator).

Your understanding needs to be more than vague as to what that fetch line of code is doing, in order to pull off this task you are going to have to have a strong understanding of bit manipulation.

Also I would call that line of code you provided buggy or at least risky. If memory[] is an array of bytes, the compiler might very well perform the left shift using byte sized math, resulting in a zero, then zero orred with the second byte results in only the second byte.

Basically a compiler is within its rights to turn this:

opcode = memory[pc] << 8) | memory[pc + 1];

Into this:

opcode = memory[pc + 1];

Which wont work for you at all, a very quick fix:

opcode = memory[pc + 0];
opcode <<= 8;
opcode |= memory[pc + 1];

Will save you some headaches. Minimal optimization will save the compiler from storing the intermediate results to ram for each operation resulting in the same (desired) output/performance.

The instruction set simulators I wrote and mentioned above are not intended for performance but instead readability, visibility, and hopefully educational. I would start with something like that then if performance for example is of interest you will have to re-write it. This chip8 emulator, once experienced, would be an afternoon task from scratch, so once you get through this the first time you could re-write it maybe three or four times in a weekend, not a monumental task (to have to re-write). (the thumbulator one took me a weekend, for the bulk of it. The msp430 one was probably more like an evening or two worth of work. Getting the overflow flag right, once and for all, was the biggest task, and that came later). Anyway, point being, look at things like the mame sources, most if not all of those instruction set simulators are designed for execution speed, many are barely readable without a fair amount of study. Often heavily table driven, sometimes lots of C programming tricks, etc. Start with something manageable, get it functioning properly, then worry about improving it for speed or size or portability or whatever. This chip8 thing looks to be graphics based so you are going to also have to deal with a lot of line drawing and other bit manipulation on a bitmap/screen/wherever. Or you could just call api or operating system functions. Basically this chip8 thing is not your traditional instruction set with registers and a laundry list of addressing modes and alu operations.

Answer 2

Basically -- Mask out the variable part of the opcode, and look for a match. Then use the variable part.

For example 1NNN is the jump. So:

int a = opcode & 0xF000;
int b = opcode & 0x0FFF;
if(a == 0x1000)
   doJump(b);

Then the game is to make that code fast or small, or elegant, if you like. Good clean fun!

Answer 3

Different CPUs store values in memory differently. Big endian machines store a number like $FFCC in memory in that order FF,CC. Little-endian machines store the bytes in reverse order CC, FF (that is, with the "little end" first).

The CHIP-8 architecture is big endian, so the code you will run has the instructions and data written in big endian.

In your statement "opcode = memory[pc] << 8 | memory[pc + 1];", it doesn't matter if the host CPU (the CPU of your computer) is little endian or big endian. It will always put a 16-bit big endian value into an integer in the correct order.

There are a couple of resources that might help: http://www.emulator101.com gives a CHIP-8 emulator tutorial along with some general emulator techniques. This one is good too: http://www.multigesture.net/articles/how-to-write-an-emulator-chip-8-interpreter/

Answer 4

You're going to have to setup a bunch of different bit masks to get the actual opcode from the 16-bit word in combination with a finite state machine in order to interpret those opcodes since it appears that there are some complications in how the opcodes are encoded (ie, certain opcodes have register identifiers, etc., while others are fairly straight-forward with a single identifier).

Your finite state machine can basically do the following:

1. Get the first nibble of the opcode using a mask like `0xF000. This will allow you to "categorize" the opcode
2. Based on the function category from step 1, apply more masks to either get the register values from the opcode, or whatever other variables might be encoded with the opcode that will narrow down the actual function that would need to be called, as well as it's arguments.
3. Once you have the opcode and the variable information, do a look-up into a fixed-length table of functions that have the appropriate handlers to coincide with the opcode functionality and the variables that go along with the opcode. While you can, in your state machine, hard-code the names of the functions that would go with each opcode once you've isolated the proper functionality, a table that you initialize with function-pointers for each opcode is a more flexible approach that will let you modify the code functionality easier (ie, you could easily swap between debug handlers and "normal" handlers, etc.).