• wewbull@feddit.uk
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    4 days ago

    If the 8088 had used all but one 256 8-bit values as legal instructions, all your new instructions after that point would need to start with that unused value and then you can add a maximum of 256 instructions by using the next byte. End result is 511 instructions can be encoded in 16-bits.

    • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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      3 days ago

      Ah right! I forgot about that.

      So you either have to pad all instructions in all previous binaries, or reduce the amount of available instructions in the arch update.