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program counter

   Also found in: Acronyms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.03 sec.

program counter

A register in the control unit of the CPU that is used to keep track of the address of the current or next instruction. Typically, the program counter is advanced to the next instruction, and then the current instruction is executed. Also known as a "sequence control register" and the "instruction pointer." See address register and instruction register.

(hardware)program counter - (PC, or "instruction address register") A register in the central processing unit that contains the addresss of the next instruction to be executed. The PC is automatically incremented after each instruction is fetched to point to the following instruction. It is not normally manipulated like an ordinary register but instead, special instructions are provided to alter the flow of control by writing a new value to the PC, e.g. JUMP, CALL, RTS.


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A program counter is a special purpose storage location containing the address of the next instruction to be executed.
Using instructional simulation in the computing curriculum by Crews, Thad / Academic Exchange Quarterly
Additionally, Freescale has added a shadow program counter to the core for more efficient subroutine calls.
Freescale Announces Ultra-Low-End Core for New Entrants to 8-bit; ... by Business Wire
Other enhancements include additional peripherals such as a five channel program counter array (PCA), serial peripheral interface (SPI), keyboard interrupt interface, hardware watchdog timer, and enhanced Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) with a dedicated baud rate generator and automatic address recognition.
Crossware Enhances 8051 Trainer with Flash Microcontroller and ... by Business Wire
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