nop - What does it mean?

'nop' hits on the web

(en-noun)

(programming) A no-op; a CPU instruction that does nothing.

* 1999 , Dominic Sweetman, See MIPS Run

The MIPS instruction set is rich in nops , since any instruction with zero as a destination is guaranteed to do nothing.

* 2004 , Patterson et al'', ''Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface

Notice that in computing CPI or IPC, we do not count any nops executed as useful instructions.

(en-verb)

(programming) To replace machine code with nop instructions when modifying software.

* 1992 , The Cyborg, The Cracking Manual

For example, if there is a CALL 3140 and we want to skip this call, we can NOP it out.

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