NOP—No Operation

Opcode Instruction Op/En 64-Bit Mode Compat/Leg Mode Description
90 NOP NP Valid Valid One byte no-operation instruction.
0F 1F /0 NOP r/m16 M Valid Valid Multi-byte no-operation instruction.
0F 1F /0 NOP r/m32 M Valid Valid Multi-byte no-operation instruction.

Instruction Operand Encoding

Op/En Operand 1 Operand 2 Operand 3 Operand 4
NP NA NA NA NA
M ModRM:r/m (r) NA NA NA

Description

This instruction performs no operation. It is a one-byte or multi-byte NOP that takes up space in the instruction stream but does not impact machine context, except for the EIP register.

The multi-byte form of NOP is available on processors with model encoding:

The multi-byte NOP instruction does not alter the content of a register and will not issue a memory operation. The instruction’s operation is the same in non-64-bit modes and 64-bit mode.

Operation

The one-byte NOP instruction is an alias mnemonic for the XCHG (E)AX, (E)AX instruction.
The multi-byte NOP instruction performs no operation on supported processors and generates undefined opcode
exception on processors that do not support the multi-byte NOP instruction.
The memory operand form of the instruction allows software to create a byte sequence of “no operation” as one
instruction. For situations where multiple-byte NOPs are needed, the recommended operations (32-bit mode and
64-bit mode) are:
Length Assembly Byte Sequence
2 bytes 66 NOP 66 90H
3 bytes NOP DWORD ptr [EAX] 0F 1F 00H
4 bytes NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + 00H] 0F 1F 40 00H
5 bytes NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + EAX*1 + 00H] 0F 1F 44 00 00H
6 bytes 66 NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + EAX*1 + 00H] 66 0F 1F 44 00 00H
7 bytes NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + 00000000H] 0F 1F 80 00 00 00 00H
8 bytes NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + EAX*1 + 00000000H] 0F 1F 84 00 00 00 00 00H
9 bytes 66 NOP DWORD ptr [EAX + EAX*1 + 00000000H] 66 0F 1F 84 00 00 00 00 00H

Flags Affected

None.

Exceptions (All Operating Modes)

#UD If the LOCK prefix is used.